Spam Offers Up Striking Numbers
For most of us, dealing with spam is a fact of life. But when you end up hearing about the response rate being something in the 0.00001% range, you begin to wonder where in the heck the profit actually is? Well it turns out that despite the terrible turnaround for spammers, they manage to make a fair income of something like 3.5 million a year thanks to the wonders of bot networks acting on the spammer’s chosen email campaign.
How do they manage to stay out of jail? Simple: base themselves outside of the reach of countries that might seek to prosecute them and then use those same countries as targets for their bot network exploits.
How can this kind of work possibly prove to be so profitable for spammers? I suspect it has to do with the fact that they have user PCs doing their dirty work for them all over the world. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So even with good spam filters in place, they still manage to make money off of those foolish enough to participate and seek out the offer sent to them via email.
I all honesty, I believe stronger, long term success is to be had providing useful information and using good SEO to drive the traffic. It may not be as easy, but at least you do not have to watch where you travel. Will spammers ever grow up and learn to take their creativity into other areas? Doubtful, but one can always hope.
6 Comments
EPgeek
November 11th, 2008
at 7:11am
Matt, You should look at the good work that Knujon is doing at www dot knujon dot com . They have found that one way to hit the spammers is thru ICANN and the registration process. The Knujon folks have stirred up a storm at ICANN, which has been lax on enforcement of their own policies, and has seemed to support the spammers at every turn. Us tech’s out here in end-user land need to support Knujon in this fight and should push to get some representation on the ICANN board.
Jim Saunders
November 11th, 2008
at 2:47pm
My spam filter catches appprox. 250 to 500 spasm emails daily. there’s got to be a way to put those Bast34#$%# behind bars. They do nothing but take up band width and muck up the system. What can I do to help. Please tell me. I have a good filter that screens them out, but why are they there in the first place? Tell me what to do to shut them down and I will do my best to do it!!!!!
Yours in His service
Papa Smurf aka Jim Saunders
In God We Trust
amolpatil2k
November 11th, 2008
at 4:46pm
We live a simple life. We attend office, watch TV, check email and collect our paycheck. What ACTUALLY goes on in all aspects of our life is far worse than spam. We are tired of spam only because it is more visible. If other crap was more visible, we would take 10 times more spam and not say a word.
Tinman
November 11th, 2008
at 6:52pm
If you really want to help stop the spammers, just go to http://www.knujon.com/ to learn what email address to send your spams to. The more spam reporters the better chance of nipping it at the bud. I’ve been totally impress with Knujon, my spam has gone from 60 – 80% of my email down to one or two spams a week, all from reporting to Knujon…..
Get Your KnujOn - On ~ IT Professionals
November 12th, 2008
at 4:11pm
[...] Sorry for the strange title, but it just hit me like that. At any rate, KnujOn is interesting as it allows frustrated people such as myself the option of taking action rather than whining about it in Lockergnome posts. So big shout out to Tinman. [...]
Time Marches On | Chris Pirillo
December 6th, 2008
at 6:54pm
[...] Spam offers up striking numbers. [...]