# Does anyone really make any money from spam anymore? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 15, 2005, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635 "2005-03-15T14:39:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Elvez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@Elvez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elvez)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/1 "2005-03-15T14:39:46Z")
Other than the people coding spam filters, I mean. I have to look through about 75 spam titles and senders every day to make sure nothing I need gets filtered. Most of the time, everything on the list is just junk. It’s not like junk paper mail, which might occasionally have something useful, like a sale on socks or something. This is just absolute crap, with mis-spelled words, words spelled with symbols, and random chunks of text to try to get past blockers. Do enough people still feed this business by clicking on the links and such? How’s anyone making any money? ---
**Author:** ![mittu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@mittu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mittu)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/2 "2005-03-15T14:43:18Z")
I heard this question asked of a computer expert (he was editor of a computing magazine) on talk radio a few weeks back. Apparently despite the vast majority of people being smart enough to delete all such emails there are some, and it doesn’t take many, that do buy things such as viagra over the internet. Due to the incredibly low overheads of spam a seller can afford to send millions upon millions of emails and only needs a handful of people to buy for it to become profitable. If each email sent cost 5p we would see the end of spam overnight but unfortunately at present it is still a cost-effective way of selling goods. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/3 "2005-03-15T14:44:13Z")
Not wanting to hijack, but I think first we need to establish whether anybody (other than the coders etc.) _ever_ made money. Wasn’t it always the case that they only had to insist on upfront fees from the ‘clients’, via a successful and wildly-optimisatic sales pitch, to make money? ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/4 "2005-03-15T15:23:33Z")
I heard in an interview with the guys who sold the Iraq playing cards that they had a huge uptick in the amount that they sold when the spam started. It wasn’t clear to me from the interview if they contracted to send the spam or the retailers of the cards that had the spam sent. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/5 "2005-03-15T15:45:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Does anyone really make any money from spam anymore? Hormel? ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/6 "2005-03-15T15:49:10Z")
This article is a couple of years old, but at least back then people made money on spam. I’d guess they still do. > **[Swollen Orders Show Spam's Allure](https://www.wired.com/2003/08/swollen-orders-show-spams-allure/)** > > A New Hampshire company appears to be grossing close to half a million dollars each month by spamming people with sales pitches for an herbal "male enhancement" product. The discovery may explain the intractability of junk e-mailers on the Internet.... ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/7 "2005-03-15T17:30:59Z")
I’ve especially wondered that about the folks who work so hard to get around filters. Before I started using Bayesian learning filters, I spent many hours hand-building filters. Isn’t it obvious that if I’ve taken the trouble to filter out viagra, v!agra, v-i-a-g-r-a, v1agra, and a couple of dozen other variations, \I’m not interested in the damned product?\ Why do they continue to look for ways to bypass filters just to get emails into the hands of people who will (a) delete them, (b) get pissed off, and © not buy the product anyway. If they just used the proper product name, spelled correctly, then their emails would get to people who might be interested, but not to the folks who won’t buy from them anyway. Doesn’t this make better business sense? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/8 "2005-03-15T20:49:58Z")
That would be true if the only people with filters were the ones who had made an effort to put them in. But if nothing else, almost all ISPs now filter spam at their level, so the spammers have to at least get past the ISPs. And many e-mail programs will filter spam automatically, too, by default. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/9 "2005-03-15T21:15:25Z")
If no-one made money from spam anymore, spam would vanish overnight. Why else would anyone do it? As it is, spam is still on the increase. As long as there are idiots who’ll buy spammed products, we’ll always have spam. ---
**Author:** ![a\_pirahna\_brother](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4bbf92/32.png) [@a\_pirahna\_brother](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a_pirahna_brother)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/10 "2005-03-16T00:25:52Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Isn’t it obvious that if I’ve taken the trouble to filter out viagra, v!agra, v-i-a-g-r-a, v1agra, and a couple of dozen other variations, \I’m not interested in the damned product?\ Why do they continue to look for ways to bypass filters just to get emails into the hands of people who will (a) delete them, (b) get pissed off, and © not buy the product anyway. You used a couple of dozen variations, Rob Cockerham calculated there are 1,300,925,111,156,286,160,896 variations on spelling “Viagra” that are still somewhat recognizable to humans. [obligatory link](http://www.cockeyed.com/lessons/viagra/viagra.html) The spammers don’t care if you’ve set up filters, with 1.3 sextillion combinations, they’re almost guaranteed to get past a keyword filter. To answer the question about people actually buying from spammers, yes, people actually do. The link to the _Wired_ article is one example, but I remember reading another article in the _Wall Street Journal_ about a guy in NYC that actually bought stuff from spammers, vitamins, “enhancement” pills, gadgets, it didn’t matter. He seemed to enjoy getting all the spam, and he wasn’t technically mentally impared, although most of us here would think he was. Another thing to consider about spammers, from what I’ve read, a lot of the market is in spammers selling valid addresses to each other. A valid email address is worth something, and if you have thousands of addresses that are know good, then you can make some decent money by selling them to other spammers, the spammers literally feed off each other. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/11 "2005-03-16T00:27:40Z")
Yes, they can send out millions of messages virtuually cost free in order to find the one sucker. However, I wonder how that sucker contacts them. If they provide any type of legitimate contact information, phone number, address, website, or e-mail, it seems they would be bombarded by anti-spam crusaders. How do the spammers prevent themselves from being spammed? ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2005, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/12 "2005-03-17T20:14:25Z")
> [@Futile Gesture](#): > > If no-one made money from spam anymore, spam would vanish overnight. Why else would anyone do it? Because they all figure that someone else must be making money from it or they wouldn’t all be doing it? Or maybe because the überspammers and folks selling mailing lists convince people to become spammers on the promise of making money, but the ones selling the lists are the only ones who really do? I don’t know – just throwing out other possibilities. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2005, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/13 "2005-03-17T21:10:37Z")
- - - I once read that one place selling a “natural viagra” -concoction- said that they charged customers $150 for the stuff, and paid the referrer $120… ~ ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2005, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/14 "2005-03-17T21:56:13Z")
Profitable? [Incredibly:](http://www.zzine.org/read.php?op=view&item=1067) > [@](#): > > The thing with spamming is that it is incredibly profitable. As long as people continue to click on links, and purchase products, spamming will continue. [Incredibly:](http://wps.aw.com/aw_laudon_ecommerce_2/0,8002,1062857-,00.html) > [@](#): > > There is little doubt that spam has become the “killer app” of the Web…spam works-- send out 5 million spams and a sufficient number of people respond to make it worthwhile. Send out 10 million spams, and twice as many respond with cash in hand. The economics of spam are such that even an incredibly low response rate, like 10 in a million, can make the effort economically profitable. [A major industry in Nigeria:](http://www.ksag.org/Publications/ConsumerCorner/Seniors/040803.htm) > [@](#): > > Free email has made the [Nigerian] scam incredibly profitable for its perpetrators. Not everyone agrees, but this is from someone who [purchased the services of spammer, not originating it herself:](http://www.burningknife.com/bulkmail.shtml) > [@](#): > > Another reason that spam is so inexpensive is that it shifts the cost from the advertiser to the recipient…Out of the 250,000 people her message went to, Shames received only ten orders - a less-than-dismal .004% response rate. Since she paid $199 for her mailing list, it cost [Erika] Shames $20 for each of the $15 subscription orders she received. Still, I think the fact that I receive 500 spam messages a day in my mailbox and the number is increasing means someone is making money. Except from me. And I think the 10 people that replied to Shames should be severely educated. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2005, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/15 "2005-03-17T22:25:18Z")
Tangential question: If all the spam filters were turned off at every level of email transmission, how many messages would I be receiving? ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2005, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/16 "2005-03-17T22:52:22Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > A major industry in Nigeria Spamming and scamming aren’t the same. The Nigerian scams only use email as a simple way to cast the bait. The crime (and therefore the profit) come later. > [@](#): > > Still, I think the fact that I receive 500 spam messages a day in my mailbox and the number is increasing means someone is making money. Except from me. This could mean many things. It could mean that your address has recently become more widely-circulated. It could mean your ISP has changed its filtering policy or systems. And it could be, as mentioned in the OP, that the spammers themselves are making money even though their customers may not. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2005, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/17 "2005-03-18T00:35:39Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Spamming and scamming aren’t the same. The Nigerian scams only use email as a simple way to cast the bait. The crime (and therefore the profit) come later. Call it what you will. Since many spam offers are fraudulent, many people lump the Nigerian frauds in with the spam scams. Either way, it’s unwanted email, and that’s what defines spam for many. > [@](#): > > This could mean many things. It could mean that your address has recently become more widely-circulated. It could mean your ISP has changed its filtering policy or systems. And it could be, as mentioned in the OP, that the spammers themselves are making money even though their customers may not. Or it could mean they are making a profit on the balance. For the record, my ISP does not filter my email – they have strict instructions not to. My address was widely circulated almost 10 years ago, not recently, and is still found on many web sites by design. However, a significant quantity of email I see at the server level is “generated” by either humans or robots from a list of common names and/or alphabetic sequences, like abc@, abd@, abe@, dave@, mary@, bigboy1@, bigboy2@, etc. > [@Cervaise](#): > > Tangential question: If all the spam filters were turned off at every level of email transmission, how many messages would I be receiving? My experience might be at the high end due to the factors mentioned above, but it is approaching 500 per day and increasing about 20% per year, slower than in the past. What’s worse is the average data length is increasing, too, from short text-only messages to 200K HTML versions with additional graphics that attempt to load upon viewing. Then there are the ones that cannot be easily deleted. Fun stuff. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2005, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/18 "2005-03-18T02:09:03Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Spamming and scamming aren’t the same. The Nigerian scams only use email as a simple way to cast the bait. The crime (and therefore the profit) come later. Wrong, at least in this case. Spamming is sending the same message to lots of people unsolicted. I’m a spammer if I do this and the message is “Love your neighbor” as much as the Nigerian example. Thus, the Nigerians are both spammers AND scammers. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2005, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/19 "2005-03-19T19:31:20Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Spamming and scamming aren’t the same. > [@rfgdxm](#): > > Wrong, at least in this case. Spamming is sending the same message to lots of people unsolicted. The problem with flat statements like this is that there’s more than one definition of “spam.” One of the more common definitions is “unsolicited _commercial_ email” (emphasis mine - see [CAUCE](http://www.cauce.org/)). By their definition, “buy a Rolex” is spam, but “Jesus is your friend” isn’t. At this point, the Nigerian scam has turned into so much of an industry that it probably qualifies as “commercial” email anyway, making it a moot point… ---
**Author:** ![Dancer\_Flight](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dancer_flight/32/7601_2.png) [@Dancer\_Flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dancer_Flight)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2005, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635/20 "2005-03-19T22:07:55Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > The problem with flat statements like this is that there’s more than one definition of “spam.” One of the more common definitions is “unsolicited _commercial_ email” (emphasis mine - see [CAUCE](http://www.cauce.org/)). By their definition, “buy a Rolex” is spam, but “Jesus is your friend” isn’t. > > At this point, the Nigerian scam has turned into so much of an industry that it probably qualifies as “commercial” email anyway, making it a moot point… I used to read news.admin.net-abuse.email (nanae), and many there held the view that UCE is too narrow a definition, and prefer Unsolicited _Bulk_ Email as the definition for spam. Personally, if it was sent to many people, unasked, it is spam, and the spammer needs to have its email connection severed. I don’t care if the idiot is trying to sell me viagra, or Jesus, or saving the whales, keep it out of my inbox. CAUCE itself, believes that any unsolicited email, whether it be of the bulk, commercial, religious, or political persuasion is a problem, they merely are trying to get the most egregious stuff and politically accessible stuff taken care of first. From the [FAQ](http://www.cauce.org/about/faq.shtml): > [@CAUCE](#): > > As the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, we believe the largest and most pressing problem is unsolicited commercial email (UCE). This is not to say that unsolicited email of any content, sent once or in bulk, isn’t a part of the spam issue as a whole. CAUCE has simply chosen to limit our efforts to UCE. This decision is mostly one of political necessity: there is substantial concern raised by proposals that could affect non-commercial speech. While many of us believe there is a strong legal case to be made for treating non-commercial spam (such as political or religious spam) no differently, today’s US Congress simply does not have the political will to go after those who cannot be shown to be subsidizing their commercial activities on the unwilling backs of others. Thus, CAUCE has chosen to cut off one slice of the spam problem and address it first. “Free Speech doesn’t come ‘Postage Due’” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-make-any-money-from-spam-anymore/294635.md?page=2)