Who Benefits from Spam, Anyway? 109
Elbowgeek asks: "I've noticed that the vast majority of spam emails I receive are barely literate, to the point that in some cases one can hardly discern the product or service being advertised. Since most people are savvy/jaded enough to detect these entities that are not filtered automatically, just where does the profit motive from these messages come from? Is it simply the theory that if you send enough spam messages you're very likely to hit enough gullible recipients to make an acceptable amount of money? Does anyone have any insight on this dark underbelly of Internet advertising?"
To many stupid greedy people. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is basically an endless pot of Smuck who think they can get rich quick by selling sex toys, Investing in stock tips...
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:3, Interesting)
If spammers are just scamming their customers with full knowledge that the spam will not increase product sales, then what is the incentive to actually send out the spam messages rather than simply lie to the customer? Can one take a spammer to court and claim "this man promised to send 2 million unsolicited emails on my behalf but failed to do so; I demand a refund!" Seems difficult to proved one way or the other if the spam services are even legal.
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the stock tip spams are attempts to pump a stock. I suspect that they often work.
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:4, Insightful)
Although not my experiences are more anecdotal than imperical, I HAVE taken the time over the last year to track at least a couple dozen stocks that I have received spam for, up to a week after I received the spam. (finance.yahoo.com) About half the time, I have seen quick pops followed by quicker declines, indicating enough people purchased to drive the stock up 5%-10% (or a little more), followed by a decline within 24 hours pushing the same stock to the original price or a little lower.
Maybe 30-40% of the time, the price didn't seem to change much (maybe not enough emails were sent) or the fluxuation was inline with the stock's trends, so it couldn't be determined if the spam did anything. The remaining 10%-20 it seems the stock simply slid in price (say, 3-10%) with no rise at all.
So I can see how someone could pump up stocks and on average make money from spamming but it isn't always a sure thing. I have NOT heard of the SEC or any other agency arresting anyone for this, which seems to be clearly illegal, spam or not.
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:3, Interesting)
[...] We have received 250.000 free trading shares from a third party, not an officer, director or affiliate shareholder. We intend to sell all 250.000 shares now, which could cause the stock to go down. This company has : negative cash flow from operations, no revenues in its most recent quarter, an accumulated defecit, a negative net worth, nominal cash, a going concern opinion from its auditor and related pa
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:2)
Of course, the real problem is the idiots who actually read the "stock tips" and buy stock based on this "information". Just like all spam, the problem is equally the people who spend the money. If no one bought from spammers (or their clients), spammers wo
Greedy, but not necessarily stupid (Score:2)
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:1)
Still, there are people who still try heroin thinking it can't possibly get them addicted despite the millions affected by the drug. Money is probably the most potent drug of all...
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:1)
I get 100,000 spams a month.
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:2)
Sheesh. That is 3000 a day.
I get something in the region of 1500 a month, very few false positives but 10% (easily identifiable) false negatives which immediately get the click of death.
If I have been away for a few days, there is no such thing as a false positive. If it has been sorted out by the filter then it gets junked, sight unseen. With 3000 a day then it would be like that every day.
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:1)
Re:To many stupid greedy people. (Score:2)
The short answer (Score:5, Insightful)
A few observations (Score:1)
(1) Unavailability (illegal or taboo)
They don't know of any other place to buy the product being advertised (perhaps because it is not advertised elsewhere, or it's illegal to advertise or sell), or they would be too embarassed to research it further or walk into a store that sells the item or request it from a person in "real life."
Examples: penis enlargements, via
Re:The short answer (Score:2)
So the question really is... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So the question really is... (Score:2)
It was bad enough when we were getting spammed in English for things we could spend money on. Now we're getting nonsense spam and they provide no way to exchange funds [which bursts the 0.1% theorem]
Tom
Re:So the question really is... (Score:2)
Re:So the question really is... (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't like you need a captcha to report spam.
Tom
Re:So the question really is... (Score:2)
Google business plan? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Offer free email with gobs of space to instantly become a major player in that area.
2) Punch blatantly obvious holes in the spam filters for your biggest-budget customers.
3) When people complain, simply remind them that it's still in beta.
4) Profit!
Re:So the question really is... (Score:2)
Then again, it's been a lot less over the last 2 days...
Re:So the question really is... (Score:2)
Maybe the reason you've seen more spam is because there are more senders, and it's taking time to catch up with the load. More senders means more possible diversity, after all.
My theory (Score:1)
Which of course brings up the question . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Which of course brings up the question . . . (Score:2)
Doesn't even need to be a big conspiracy, a small group of people can send out a huge amount of spam. I remember my grandpa once got adware that was an advertisement for adware removal.
Re:Which of course brings up the question . . . (Score:2)
This was pioneered, or at least most famously done, by Sanford "Spamford" Wallace. This guy, an early pioneer of spam in the '90s, was sued by AOL and some of the other majors into ending his attacks on people's mailboxes.
A few years later, he surfaces with a new bright idea... install adware on people's computers which then deluges them with pop-ups to buy his buggy adware remover that actually installs more adware. I be
Re:Which of course brings up the question . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My theory (Score:2)
Re:My theory (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Spam has never been used to advertise respectable products.
2. The motive for virus writing nowadays is profit, same as spam. Viruses let you put up adware and create zombie hordes for spam forwarding or DDoS blackmailing.
3. In the past, the motive for virus writing was not to hurt other people, but simply a kind of power trip or experiment. For proof, look at how very small the proportion of viruses that intentionally delete data is. The psychopathic "hurt as many people as possible" mindset is extremely rare.
Re:My theory (Score:1)
After people started getting more and more upset about spam, legitimate businesses naturally moved awa
Re:My theory (Score:2)
Re:My theory (Score:2)
Re:My theory (Score:3, Informative)
I run a small project web hosting company with about 30 customers. We used to offer outgoing SMTP services, and still do (password required), but the m
Re:My theory (Score:3, Informative)
Your are correct that you are incorrect. Simply examine the IP addresses that spam comes from: Comcast, RoadRunner, SBCglobal, Adelphia, ATT, kingwoodcable.com, cebridge.net, Verizon, calpop.com, atmlinkinc.com, Charter,
Re:My theory (Score:2)
Spammers benefit (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Send mass, annoyingly misspelled emails
2. Wait as stupid people wanting (insert lame thing here) open and click on them
3. ??????
4. Profit
OT: your sig (Score:1)
About your sig, you could close the bracket, and then, I think (iirc) that you can do directly return, might take a cast but i don't think it's even needed ;-)
funny createSig(witty remark, odd reference) //that's how i'd do it ;-)
{
return sigOut = remark + reference;
}
Re:OT: your sig (Score:2)
Of course, it's a sig, not a function... so we really shouldn't be analyzing it this carefully.
OT:My sig (Score:1)
Re:OT: your sig (Score:1)
gahh!
Re:OT: your sig (Score:2)
Re:Spammers benefit (Score:2, Insightful)
3 1/2. Sell list of e-mail addresses to other spammers
4. Profit!
Just a theory.
Not everyone makes a profit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Trust me, the illiterate folks really don't make any money. But they're only part of your spam. The one where, you know, you can actually find some information on how to buy a product? They're doing ok.
TW
Don't you read Slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently a lot of the 'gibberish' spam not trying to sell you anything is just there to try to untrain the spam filters so the next one that does try to sell you something might slip through. Or it negates the spam filters' effectiveness so much that people have to start looking in their spam filters for actual messages.
Personally, I think there's a lot less of a greed factor right now than there is an 'us vs' them' factor. I really think it's just getting to be an elaborate game for these spammers now - all they're trying to do is thwart the filters, and they've forgotten all about trying to dupe people out their money.
It wasn't the obvious gibberish spam... (Score:1)
I'm talking about the spam which combines ever more elaborate ways to spell out \/|/\gr/\ (or teen virgin, or hot MILF) with an obvious complete lack of command of the English language, which is an obvious attempt to get around the filters as opposed to training them. This produces a subject header which is com
Re:Don't you read Slashdot? (Score:2)
There are two layers at work (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two layers at work; the spammers and the "vendors" they spam for. The spammers are paid to spam, but they don't really care if the product sells or not. It's just like any advertising--magazines are paid to print your ads, but if they ads don't work, it's not their problem.
If you extrapolate normal advertising out by a few orders of magnitude (dumber, cheaper, wider distribution, etc.) you get spam. If you don't extrapolate out far enough (and find yourself in direct mail or telemarketing), no worries. Just keep going in that general direction a while longer, and eventually you'll come to spam.
--MarkusQ
Re:There are two layers at work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There are two layers at work (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes the spammer is the sucker (Score:2)
Fortunately, a lot o
Re:There are two layers at work (Score:2)
If your theory is correct, sales from spam campaigns are zero or close to zero. Now I can understand a vendor paying for a single spam run -- after all, the vendor probably has an inbox full of spam, so "it must work or people would not send spam". However, for a person of only average intelligence, this logic will only work once: one spam run, poor to zero sales
Re:There are two layers at work (Score:2)
The other trick is that if you contact an "opt in" list you will find that they will do a free run of 100 to 1000 so you can see how it works. You will find that you get several tentative orders. I know a guy who did that and got about
Re:There are two layers at work (Score:1)
I think this is pretty much true. Ever notice how the spam you get nowadays isn't hawking the same products it was a few years or even months ago? For a while you see stuff like "Cialis soft tabs," then it goes away. Then fake Rolexes, or Louis Vouitton handbags. Then those go away. Penny stocks for a certain company you've never heard of, they come and then they're gone, and then there's another company's penny stocks being pumped.
This indicates to me t
Not true (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not true (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, I'm just not seeing the referrer IDs you speak of.
--MarkusQ
Some Spammers sell products directly (Score:2)
Lots of mistakes (Score:3, Interesting)
I've spent an inordinate amount of time fighting spam on my server in the past. My guess is that the completely mussed up ones are a combination of the following:
Of those three, only one is intentional. Seeing some large nefarious purpose may be giving the spammers too much credit.
As a side note, some of my favorites are the pharmaceutical spams that say the names of the drugs, but don't offer any means of purchase let alone contact. I often wonder if some madman at GSK or Pfiser is reminding the world that v1a6r@ can be spelled so many different ways.
Weird one word spam lately... (Score:2)
The latest trick in the spam a
Re:Weird one word spam lately... (Score:4, Interesting)
Take a close look at these. If (a) you have a website, and (b) they come in pairs, or especially if they come in threes, they can be a signal that somebody is evaluating you for a bit of cross-site scripting--or worse yet, that they have you. They may look as though the sender has forged and garbled your email address--but then again, they may not look like that. Little spates of one-word messages merit a second glance. They're like the odd little sounds you might hear if someone were trying the doorknobs of your house in the middle of the night.
Re:Weird one word spam lately... (Score:2)
Ever heard of "phishing"? http://www.antiphishing.org/ [antiphishing.org]
Microsoft has and would benefit from spam. (Score:1, Troll)
I imagine a lot of it is a denial of service attack. Microsoft is not alone in this. A lot of spam is pure malice. It does not have contact information for a sale or even build brand awareness. Microsoft understands that free software depends on communications between programmers and users and they seek to disrupt it.
Microsoft is unique in wanting to limit network services ISP's have to offer. By creating a problem, such as 80% of the world's spam coming from their broken operating system at the end
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft has and would benefit from spam. (Score:4, Funny)
"So Microsoft intentionally ships crappy software so that spammers will disrupt communication among open source programmers? Did I get that right?"
No, silly! Microsoft intentionally ships crappy software so that spammers will disrupt communication among the Bilderbergers, The Freemasons, The Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations and then Microsoft sets up open source programmers as the bad guys creating the spam so that the Illuminati will hire the Knights Templar to kill off all the open source programmers.
It's brilliant. Really.
No, you got that wrong. (Score:2)
So Microsoft intentionally ships crappy software so that spammers will disrupt communication among open source programmers? Did I get that right?
I think you intentionally missed it.
Microsoft is making the best of things they can't change. They are incapable of shipping a good product because non free development does not work. Spammers take advantage of that. Because M$ can not or will not simply fix their software, they must impose limitations on everyone else or they will lose market share. They t
Re:No, you got that wrong. (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft has and would benefit from spam. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Microsoft has and would benefit from spam. (Score:2)
I do! (Score:3, Funny)
Spam Incentives (Score:2)
Spamming Secret Messages (Score:2)
My theory is such spam is being used as a covert channel of communication. If they send a secret message to a million people instead of just the intended recieptient, it hides the secret of the sender / reciever connection in the noise aswell.
lots of kinds of spam (Score:4, Informative)
I think there are lots of different kinds of spam, and therefore lots of different answers to the OP's question. Examples:
-A spam that they want you to click on in order to see porn. If you click on it, it really does lead to porn, and they get ad revenue.
-A spam that's trying to find out whether your address actually receives mail. If you click on the opt-out link, they've verified that the address works. They then add your e-mail to a list that they send to other spammers.
-The Nigerian scam. Yes, people really do fall for this. There was a famous case here in Orange County recently where a rich, elderly doctor blew hundreds of thousands of dollars on it.
For a spammer who owns a botnet, the cost of sending a spam is zero. When your product costs zero to produce, you can come up with a lot of ways to sell it, and still make a profit.
Re:lots of kinds of spam (Score:2)
I've long suspected that most of the spam that doesn't advertise a product or offer a virus-laden attachment falls into this category. It seems a reasonable explanation for both the long strings of random prose spam and the short nonsense sentence and single-word spam.
In a world of honeyp
Re:lots of kinds of spam (Score:2)
I think that is mostly to poison spam filters. If you mark it as junk, you're adding 'regular' words to your filters, which increases the possibilities of false positives, and eventually will make the filter useless.
Re:lots of kinds of spam (Score:2)
Certainly possible.
But, it seems to me that if your goal is to generate false positives in spam filters, you could choose much better material: namely, real email. It wouldn't be hard to mine random mailing list archives and put together messages which are clearly recognizable to humans as spam
I get these too. (Score:4, Interesting)
They are emails with gibberish for subject lines and gibberish for contents. They are sentences which make no sense what so ever, random words put together that have little meaning at all. There's no ad, no link, and the addresses they are sent from are bogus (I know, I tried finding them). A few of these emails have originating address of @ds1.yahoo.com or @server1.paypal.com or @ddl.amazon.com and so on and so forth. The actual address itself is made up of random letters and numbers.
My theory, like those suggested aboove, is that these emails are sent by "Botnets" to random email addresses in order to see which ones don't bounce. This can be in preparation for sending ad-like spam or a prelude to a virus infestation. Or, like someone else suggested it could be a form of coded communication which is widely broadcasted in order to prevent the authorities from find out its true intended destination.
Now that's an interesting theory... (Score:1)
Still, that was an interesting answer. Thanks!
You don't have to click on it (Score:2)
Re:You don't have to click on it (Score:2)
Are your numbers approximately accurate, or are you just inventing them for the sake of the point?
Re:You don't have to click on it (Score:2)
The 5% came from the fact that you want to send out a legit-looking email, say a family letter from a person with a fairly generic name. If you just send a family letter without buzzwords like viagra and cheap software or s3x, it should pass most spam filters and you can put the ads at the bottom. When you get an email from "John Smith" about h
Re:You don't have to click on it (Score:2)
Oh, I easily believe that: I did some research earlier and [url=http://www.robertjohnkaper.com/journal/200608 10092832.html]gambling and anti-depressants can pull up to a fiver[/url].
So basically it's:
1. Find emo girls and let them create profiles/blogs
2. Use contextual advertising on their profiles/blogs
3. Profit!
And to think some people laugh
I'm surprised (Score:1, Interesting)
Wired Article (Score:2, Informative)
Spam takes money/resources from YOU (Score:2)
Date, Mail recieved, Blocked spam
Aug 2 00:00:00, 5080, 25147
Aug 3 00:00:00, 4596, 24733
Aug 4 00:00:00, 4243, 27209
Aug 5 00:00:00, 1904, 24784
Aug 6 00:00:00, 2269, 24360
Aug 7 00:00:00, 4725, 32358
Aug 8 00:00:00, 5011, 33012
Aug 9 00:00:00, 5361, 33811
If you look at the stats over the last week for one of my servers, you note that anywhere from 85-91+% of the mail received is spam. This is a huge noise-to-signal ratio, and this doesn't even include a certain percentage of spam whic
gibberish spam = free character name generator! (Score:1)
I win.
Spam thwarts traffic analysis! (Score:2)
My MX server advertises STARTTLS, so a fair bit of my incoming mail, and much of my spam, is automatically encrypted on the way. Not most of it, but enough to create a steady stream of "opaque chaff" from exotic locations all over the planet. And that just might make it
Re:WTF? (Score:1)
With telemarketers I can usually discern what company is going to benefit if I
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Fine. Some idiots out there buy vi@gr@ from spam. But I'd be willing to be that damn close to 0% of people WHO ACTIVELY FILTER SPAM buy stuff from spam.
So, who do they try so hard to defeat spam blockers?? Think about it- they are working so very hard in order to make their message reach the very people who specifically try to block it.
Why?
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Furthermore, corporate mailservers filter, sometimes aggressively. How are you going to sell your v1@gr@ to bored cubicle monkeys if the goddamn company is running a barracuda.