If spam exists it must actually work

Solver · November 15, 2003, 16:45

Admit it, nothing that is used as much as spam is used for no reason. Obviously, if there's a ton of spam floating around on the Internet, it's not there for the sole purpose of annoying people. So, just why does it live? Because there are always people who like spam.

However, I just checked on my mail to see the most recent spam that I got.

The first message offers me some great libido-enhancing tablets. Conclusion - a percentage of people have to actually click on those and buy the pills!

Second message... surprise... penis enlargement pills. This time with a 100% guarantee. Again, someone must have bought those, or the spam message wouldn't have spread.

Third message, a more interesting one. A typical pyramid scheme offering me to make a few thousand dollars within two weeks. This is the most ridicilous one. Apparently, there are people who do actually forward the chain letter, and hope to receive money in their mailboxes... even though simple maths tells me that those pyramid schemes are total bull. Yet people participate, get burnt out, but the scheme survives?

Maybe someone has a decent explanation of these phenomena?

yaroslav · November 15, 2003, 17:07

How many people you need to make it profitable, Solver? I think that a very important factor is the real low cost of spam, so even when only a 0.1% or 0.01% people push the link, they're happy. And maybe they win money simply by people visiting the link, not actually buyin anything.

Solver · November 15, 2003, 17:14

The cost of spam isn't as low as it seems. Obtaining thousands of emails and sending messages costs time and bandwidth. Not to mention the fact that, under the legislation that countries are now trying to implement, spammers are risking legal issues.

And you know, I have a hard time believing that even 10 people out of a thousand would push the link to penis enlargement pills...

Adalbertus · November 15, 2003, 17:37

The biggest part of the cost is not paid for by the spammer. The spammer sends a mail of, say, 1K which costs almost nothing. They collect addresses by some programs which are certainly not costly. I guess, it takes about two minutes of spammer's time to make 50000 to 100000 people happy with another spam mail.
It costs mainly your time to sort all the stuff out and to pick the 1% of messages you are really interested in from the waste. The spammer does give a s*** on your time (And that's exactly why I think 1 second in jail for every spam mail is just the right treatment).
And, you don't need to push the link. You'll get HTML mails which open the other files on some web server of the enlargement enterprise. Unfortunately, many mail programs interpret HTML (and worse, they don't send pure ASCII by default

).

yaroslav · November 15, 2003, 17:50

Quote:

Originally posted by Solver
The cost of spam isn't as low as it seems. Obtaining thousands of emails and sending messages costs time and bandwidth. Not to mention the fact that, under the legislation that countries are now trying to implement, spammers are risking legal issues.

And you know, I have a hard time believing that even 10 people out of a thousand would push the link to penis enlargement pills...

But can't you send one message with instruction to the mail server to send it to many people? There are still servers unprotected to spam... [only guessing]

And I though that 1 people of thousand or 1 people of then thousand [0.1% or 0.01%] surely press the link

SlowwHand · November 15, 2003, 18:15

Currently, many people aren't working, yet they exist.
What says that to your theory?

Adagio · November 15, 2003, 18:22

Quote:

Originally posted by Solver
(...) it's not there for the sole purpose of annoying people. (...)

Sure it is... nobody can be that stupid to actually buy stuff from those spam mails, so it has to be to annoy people :Shame:

Ask the same question about virus. Why spend a lot of time creating a virus, that only causes harm on others, but don't bring in any money for the programmer?

Ming · November 15, 2003, 19:03

Unfortunately spam does work. It doesn't take many people to respond out of each 10,000 sent out to make money. At almost no cost, it will remain cost efficient.

Sigh...

SlowwHand · November 15, 2003, 19:20

Figure 1% ? That can add up to a lot of responses.

Ming · November 15, 2003, 19:22

Figure .01% and that's still enough for most to make a profit

realpolitic · November 15, 2003, 19:49

.01% of 100,000,000 people = 10,000 sales * $10 profit/sale = $100,000
1k Bytes * 100,000,000 people = 100GByte Bandwidth

over 4 Months
1GB / 10MSeconds = 10KB/sec

Got to go, my penis enlargement buisness awaits.

Urban Ranger · November 15, 2003, 23:58

Quote:

Originally posted by realpolitic
1k Bytes * 100,000,000 people = 100GByte Bandwidth.

Much less than that. The spammer merely sends out one single e-mail and a list of a million people to some server, preferably one that they hijacked.

You have people selling all sorts of dubious goods, plus people trying to scam the unwary.

Lawrence of Arabia · November 16, 2003, 00:13

If each email cost say $0.001, or $0.01 or $0.10 (not sure, need to do research about how much email say a business sends) then spam would be almost totally gone.

Imran Siddiqui · November 16, 2003, 02:56

Quote:

If each email cost say $0.001, or $0.01 or $0.10 (not sure, need to do research about how much email say a business sends) then spam would be almost totally gone.

Along with most email communications

.

Urban Ranger · November 16, 2003, 03:01

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Quote:

If each email cost say $0.001, or $0.01 or $0.10 (not sure, need to do research about how much email say a business sends) then spam would be almost totally gone.

Along with most email communications

.

You have already paid for the bandwidth you are using (okay, maybe not you you, you freeloading student

) but the spammers aren't. That's the whole thing.

Imran Siddiqui · November 16, 2003, 03:22

Quote:

You have already paid for the bandwidth you are using

If email is charged, then it is charged for everyone. I don't see why my $40/month just for logging on is changing the fact that I have to pay $0.01 per email, leading me to send MUCH less email.

Urban Ranger · November 16, 2003, 03:29

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Quote:

You have already paid for the bandwidth you are using

If email is charged, then it is charged for everyone. I don't see why my $40/month just for logging on is changing the fact that I have to pay $0.01 per email, leading me to send MUCH less email.

You are already paying for e-mail. What do you think, you got it for free? Your monthly rate is partly determined by an estimate on how many e-mail each user sends. This estimate in turn is based on past statistics.

How many e-mail messages do you send a month? A thousand? At $0.01 each, that's only $10, leaving $30 for other things.

Spammers are different. They send like a million a day. This absolutely kills servers and bandwidth.

Nubclear · November 16, 2003, 03:31

Let's charge $1 each.

Imran Siddiqui · November 16, 2003, 03:35

Quote:

You are already paying for e-mail. What do you think, you got it for free? Your monthly rate is partly determined by an estimate on how many e-mail each user sends. This estimate in turn is based on past statistics.

Let me quote what LoA said:

If each email cost say $0.001, or $0.01 or $0.10 (not sure, need to do research about how much email say a business sends) then spam would be almost totally gone.

IF is the operative word. LoA is saying, I believe, that if you were charged for each email you sent, on a per-email basis, then spam would be eliminated.

Because, after all, don't companies that SEND spam also pay for that email? Their monthy rate is also partly determined by an estimate of how much e-mail is sent.

Urban Ranger · November 16, 2003, 03:45

I am not sure if you are being obtuse, Imran.

Spammers do not pay for spam. If they did, as per LoA's suggestion, there wouldn't be any spammers.

Or, in some cases, they paid a lot less per spam due to fixed ISP charges. In these cases, they would be quickly cut off.

Dis · November 16, 2003, 03:45

of course it works. Same with telemarketers. They wouldn't exist if it didn't work.

But people like me don't want to put up with that ****

.

And my needs are more important than people who fall for advertisements and gimmicks.

Urban Ranger · November 16, 2003, 03:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Dissident
But people like me don't want to put up with that ****

.

Most people don't - but democracy fails here.

Imran Siddiqui · November 16, 2003, 04:23

Quote:

Spammers do not pay for spam. If they did, as per LoA's suggestion, there wouldn't be any spammers.

Argh! LoA's suggestion, if I read it right, is the EVERYONE pays a certain rate for email. So, in ADDITION to your ISP cost, the government charges each person $0.01 per email.

And if I pay for the email I send and recieve through my ISP, spammers must as well... because I'm sure most of them use commerical ISPs as well. Isn't their monthly fee inclusive of their email sending and recieving? I'm sure it is.

VetLegion · November 16, 2003, 04:53

This is what I got in spam block yesterday.

I thought of using it as avatar, maybe I will

Lawrence of Arabia · November 16, 2003, 04:53

Thats right Imran. Thats what I mean. Its a cost in addition to your ISP cost.

Urban Ranger · November 16, 2003, 05:07

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And if I pay for the email I send and recieve through my ISP, spammers must as well... because I'm sure most of them use commerical ISPs as well. Isn't their monthly fee inclusive of their email sending and recieving? I'm sure it is.

They don't. They hijack mail servers that are not properly secured, or use what are known as "open relays."

No ISP in their right mind will take a spammer on board.

Or rather, the cost will be prohibitive to the spammers.

Imran Siddiqui · November 16, 2003, 05:22

Anyway that point is moot, because LoA just said he was talking about a cost in ADDITION to your ISP cost.

Urban Ranger · November 16, 2003, 05:36

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Anyway that point is moot, because LoA just said he was talking about a cost in ADDITION to your ISP cost.

The thing is though who is going to charge the spammers this additional cost if what they are doing are already criminal? It's not like they are going to pay to your local business.

DanielXY · November 16, 2003, 05:36

Hm, I pay 50$/month for internet as much as I like. There is nothing preventing me from sending millions of eMails a day. If the message is 1k big and I add 1 million targets in the bbc field, bandwith is still no problem to send from a common pc with dsl. (at least thats my obsevation from sending a 4mb file to 12ppl. - it didnt take any longer than sending it only to 1 person).

Imran Siddiqui · November 16, 2003, 05:38

Quote:

The thing is though who is going to charge the spammers this additional cost if what they are doing are already criminal?

Well it isn't yet, IIRC. Unless they send it to you after you unsubscribe.