Does my ISP really filter out 100,000,000 spam emails per week?

[Napier]

@tellyworth

This only works if you set a price that is higher that spammers can afford, and also low enough so as not to discourage wanted emails.

Unfortunately, there’s good evidence that the price spammers are willing to pay is higher than what a typical user would pay. Easily several cents per email received, perhaps more than a dollar. That’s more than a good portion of the world’s population could afford.

What evidence? This isn’t a rhetorical dismissal, but genuine curiosity.

[tellyworth]

@Napier

What evidence? This isn’t a rhetorical dismissal, but genuine curiosity.

The prices paid on marketplaces for sketchy lead generation, backlink, SEM, MLM, PPC and scam delivery services (human and semi-automated spam). The prices spammers pay for ancillary services they need, like hosting and Captcha breaking. And cost per click rates for Google ads give some indication I think.

When insurance companies are paying Google $40+ per click, it’s not hard to imagine they’d spend $0.01, $0.10 or even $1.00 to deliver an unsolicited email to a potential customer.

Also, in situations where there is already a delivery cost (such as a form that requires a Captcha or phone number), spammers often use MLM-style scams to dupe other people into paying that cost for them. That’s what a lot of those “my sister makes $x an hour” scams are about.