Windows

99,999 Innocent Bystanders Spammed

Posted by on Jul 29, 2004 | 3 Comments

Spammers wreak havoc on millions of people for one simple reason: It’s a money-making enterprise, and it’s easy to do.

Microsoft Research has a piece just out that explains that if a million people receive a single spam e-mail broadcast, only one recipient needs to spend $11.00 on whatever they’re selling to make the effort profitable.

It’s hard to make spamming unprofitable when the costs are so low, so instead, one solution would be to make it awfully inconvenient. The research article contains some interesting ideas about how to counter spam in ways that might actually stick.

The article is a good one for anyone interested in the technical, social, and geographical detailed of spamming. [Greg Hughes]

  • http://jonnytee96.xtreemhost.com Jonathan Thornton

    When you try writing on a major website, you should really either check your grammar, or, if you’re incapable of doing so correctly, have someone do it for you.

    “…that dictates who its best for. It’s comical as uses of each swear that there mobile OS is the best for EVERYONE”

    it’s* users* their*

    “This means getting apps and games out can include the use of stuff like Flash.”

    Huh? I’m assuming you meant to type “that” or “which” between “out” and “can,” the latter of which would be better-used as “may.”

    These were a mere few errors I noticed.

  • http://www.youonpictures.com Anonymous

    Well im going to state my opinion here. I first started off the smartphone/pda world with a PalmOS device, called the Palm Zire 71 and loved it to bits. Then i saw the iPhone, then later the iPod touch and had to have it. I got an iPod Touch and loved it. When i first saw Android i hated it. Later it grew on me to give Android a try. But instead i bought a Palm Pre Plus because i still loved Palm, and i must say that the Palm WebOS was amazing, and i was finding myself not using my iPod touch anymore in favour of my Palm Pre. I later had to give up my Pre because of reception issues and my provider (was AT&T). Then i bought my first android device, and fell in love with Android. The hardware on that phone was bad, but i loved Android (It was a Samsung Acclaim, a lower end Android device) so i upgraded to my current phone the HTC Desire, and i absolutely love it. I never use my iPod touch anymore (just for music now) because i find iOS very boring and nothing is never new. You dont have the freedom you do with Android in iOS.And Freedom is a great thing when it comes to Operating Systems.

  • http://kevinrubin.blogspot.com Kevin Rubin

    One of my friends asked which I recommended for her… I said that everyone I know who has an iPhone loves it, but also that everyone I know who has an Android phone loves it. The only people I know who hate one or the other are people who don’t have one and hate them more on principle than for the actual device itself…

    On the other hand, as a senior Java developer, if she wants to get one of those devices to write software, Android would be easier for her to get started, since she already knows Java. But an iPhone would require her to get a Mac development environment and learn Objective-C (which as a senior developer wouldn’t be too hard, same concepts but different syntax…)

    Me? I’m quite happy with my iOS devices, but I want to get something Android to play with, something like the best of both worlds.