Is spam even real?

Factual Questions
1

I get the stuff, just like the rest of y’all. Some, like the Nigerian Scam stuff, falls into its own class. But the majority of it falls into a general class.

Now, I’d always understood it from an economic perspective. Even though they know they piss off, or at least annoy, the overwhelming majority of recipients, if the spammers can get some fraction of 1% to respond, they’re in profitville.

But then I look at some of the stuff I get and, when I compare the quality of the message to junk snail mail, it’s hard to imagine someone actually responding. Junk snail mail may well abuse the language, but it’s not garbled. I know, as the argument goes, someone must be responding or they wouldn’t keep doing it. I’m not sure I have enough faith in the sensibilities of some of the “entrepreneurs” out there to recognize that principle.

So I get these offers that appear to be proferring, usually, tits, dicks, mortgages, prescription drugs and, oddly, septic tanks. But I look at them again and realize that often enough it’s almost impossible to tell what exactly they’re selling or, more importantly, how to respond in the affirmative to one of these messages.

I realize that some are just feeling out email addresses. If that’s the majority, then it’s a closed-end game.

I’m given, then, to wonder:

• If you respond affirmatively to one of these emails, do you actually receive a legitimate mortgage, some Viagra or a septic tank?

• Do spammers really make any money?

• Considering the multiplicity of similar offers, I have to consider that perhaps some spammers are working off the old “stuffing envelopes” model - is that right?

2

  1. The vast majority of spam of this sort is for scams. So no, you would most likely not receive anything legitimate.

  2. Evidently. It seems unlikely they would continue to do it for so long if they were burning cash.

  3. Absolutely.

3

Spam exists because sending vast amounts of email is almost free. And spammers can make as much as $10 for every ‘hit’ they get (i.e. when someone responds to spam the spammer gets ten bucks back from the company they’re ‘pimping’ for).

So they send 3 or 4 million emails each day and even if they only get 30 or 40 hits (or a 0.00001% success rate) they are still making $300 to $400 a day!

4

According to TechTV about 10 percent of all spam gets an actual reply. (From someone they spammed.)

According to MSNBC the Nigerian Scam has netted 6 BILLION dollars. Yes BILLION. It is so commonplace the US Government has a person in Nigeria who deals with it.

That is the point I never got about spam. Why would ANYONE buy Viagra from someone stupid enough to spell it V l ^ G ~~R ^. Just so it gets by a filter.

And moreover if I put a filter on stopping Viagra ads it must mean I don’t want it so why try and sell me something I don’t want.

Yet…

5

That can’t be true. Maybe 0.10% or 0.001%. Who could have enough time to make up for the thousands of spam messages I’ve ignored in the last year?

6

Markxxx:

I suspect that the logic behind such spam is that they are trying to circumvent corporate filters and ISP filters to get their product to those pathetic individuals who actually want it.

7

I think that may mean that 10% of spam batches (for lack of a better word) get at least one live response from the hundreds of thousands or millions of addresses it is sent to. So if an “envelope stuffer” sends out 20 distinct messages a day (each to multiple recipients), he will net something like two responses. I don’t think they’ll get very rich that way…

Was that what you meant, Markxxx? 'Cause if not, I second KenGr sentiment…

8

My last job was a system analyst and admin. I kid you not every day I would get calls. “This looks like a virus, shoud I open it?” “It can’t be a virus it’s from my friend.” And my ever popular General Manager who couldn’t remember his password yet ALWAYS managed to take off his virus protection and he got the I LOVE YOU virus THREE times. (Our virus protection system kept you from downloading songs.) Not to mention all those people paging me with “My computer says it isn’t running with full capacity. It told me to click here should I?” It’s an ad.

I can believe 10% of all spam is CLICKED ON. They didn’t say they sold anything. People will click on virtually anything.

9

This Wired article has some interesting information about people who buy stuff from spammers:

10

Makes sense, I guess. Duh, gotta keep reminding myself that half the population is dumber than average… :smack: and :eek:

Dani

11

I often read “spam must make money or it wouldn’t happen,” but this isn’t strictly the case. Simply, people have to think spam will make money, it doesn’t have to actually make money. As long as one more idiot thinks spam is a good way to make money, then there will be one more spammer.

Spam occasionally is two parts. The advertised product or company, and the company or individual who actually sends the spam. It isn’t necessary that the spam makes money for the advertised company, only that the advertised company believes it will make them money. The advertised company pays a spammer to send their messages, so the spammer makes money. The advertised company may then not make any money, and stop paying the spammer to send their ads. The spammer then just moves on to the next company.

This is probably the case when a legitimate, though very sleazy, company is using spam to advertise.

Even for spammers selling their own products or scams, they only have to believe spam will make them money to keep doing it. The money doesn’t have to actually show up. The damage is done when somebody spams for a few months, and then quits because they aren’t making any money.

12

I know this has been answered before, but is there a way to ban spam from Outlook Express? The only thing I can get is banning any yahoo.com and hotmail.com addresses. This is a pain in the ass, since so many people (relatives) use the domains. I forward all the valium.m-type stuff to (let’s see if someone can show me how to do this in a link). FTC.ORG.

Oh yeah, webmasters please PLEASE tell me how I get the MailerDaemon bounce. I need to kill these people. (Mods, this would be justifiable)

13

I think the only way to really get away from spam is to make sure your e-mail doesn’t get publicized. In other words use a throw away e-mail for all message board posting and all registrations, etc. Just forwarding the spam without an explanation is not a very good idea. This may result in your e-mail or domain being blocked as a spam source.

14

Within Outlook Express, you can go to Tools / Message Rules / Mail and set up your own filters.

15

If you respond to a Spam, you can end up getting even MORE spam. Spammers use a shotgun approach, sending e-mail to tens of thousands of addresses: they don’t necessarily know if your e-mail address is legitimate until you reply to it.

Spam wouldn’t work if there weren’t a tiny percentage of stupid people who buy things from them. Those people should be beaten with a flaming two-by-fours for reducing Internet e-mail to a state of useless inactivity.

16

Check out spampal for a free spam filter that works well.

17

There would be NO spam if everyone did like I do… I NEVER open spam… I delete it!

But the world is full of suckers and spam will continue for it makes big bucks from the suckers.

MailWasher works very well… the spam is stopped before it downloads from my server and deleted.

On my hotmail account I have the junk mail set to “Exclusive”… that means any mail that is no in my address book will auto delete.

18

Well you’ll probably receive something, though probably not what’s described in the spam. Always remember the golden rule: spammers are liars.

Spammers are not selling any product, they are just hired by those who are. So the only thing ‘sold’ in direct result to your reply to the spammer is your name. You are passed on to the less-than-reputable company as a likely ‘mark’. The kind of idiot that believes spam and easily parted from their money.

Naturally. Otherwise why do it? This is why I’m coming around to the idea that everyone should reply to spammers, but with fake info. This will get sold on to the company paying the spammer, who will have to wade through thousands of false responses to find the genuine idiots. Suddenly the whole spamming business model wouldn’t look like such easy money.

Yeah. Spammers often delegate out to “sub-contractors” who are on a percentage, it spreads the risk off of them. They give the same databases out to them all, what do they care how many each person receives?

19

Time for my conspiracy theory:

I have never met a person who has bought something as a result of spam advertising. All I’ve ever heard is complaints about spam and how annoying (and in some cases disgusting) it is. Preventing spam from landing in users’ mailboxes is big business. The people who are benefitting most from spam are producers of anti-spam products! As long as there is a steady, ever increasing flow of spam, they will be able to sell their products. What is even more brilliant about their scheme is that if they send out spam, they know ahead of time that it’s spam, thereby making their product seem more accurate!

It does not matter that someone might believe that spam is an effective marketing tool and then pay spammers to do the deed. Why would the spammers even bother sending out anything, if there’s no way for their client to check if the emails were actually sent? Surely they would just collect the cash and say ‘the job is done’, rather than wasting resources?

Spam is so poorly formatted and worded that I believe it is just created to annoy people into buying anti-spam products. I’ll bet it’s quite difficult to actually buy anything advertised in a spam email.

I can extend this conspiracy theory to include viruses as well (without derailing the thread hopefully); as long as there is a constant stream of new viruses, anti-virus vendors will continue to thrive. Anti-virus products are fatally flawed in their design. There is always a window period between the release of a virus and the time the software can be updated to detect said virus. I surmise that this is the reason 99% of viruses don’t actually do any real harm to a PC (like formatting the hard disk or flashing the BIOS). Viruses like this would render AV software useless, and people would not buy the products!

Of course, I have no proof of this, it’s just a theory. flame suit on

20

n3rd I’m with you on your conspiracy-theory on anti-virus-software! I’ve always thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if there would be fewer, or different, viruses if the government would centrally “police” the Internet for viruses.
Then there would be, for the majority of people, no more need to buy anti-virussoftware from companies that make a profit out of doing so.

was the only one making anit-virus-software, and not some private company who wants to make a profit.