Posted on 08/25/2004 1:31:29 PM PDT by solicitor77
CHICAGO, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Russian underworld figures and Nigerian e-mail scam artists are no longer responsible for most of the spam arriving in U.S. e-mail inboxes.
The latest research indicates most spam on the Internet in the United States is now generated domestically -- not overseas. "American spammers are the driving force," Phyllis Schneck, vice president of CipherTrust Inc., an Internet security firm in Atlanta, told United Press International.
Experts say that is not just an interesting tidbit. It is explosive information, because it means legislation passed by Congress last year to curtail spam has not worked, and many Internet marketers who mass-mail commercial messages increasingly are employing illegal methods.
"Spammers are getting around the law," said Schneck, who has a doctorate in computer science.A study released this week by Sophos Inc., an anti-spam software developer in Lynnfield, Mass., -- a copy of which was provided to UPI -- indicates 42.53 percent of the world's spam is now produced in the United States. The second-biggest spam producer is South Korea, with 15.42 percent of all unwanted commercial e-mail. Third is China and Hong Kong, which combined to produce 11.62 percent of all spam, according to the Sophos study.
"It is quite evident that the CAN-SPAM legislation has made very little headway in damming the flood of spam," said Chris Kraft, senior security analyst at Sophos.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
Be interesting to find out how effective spam is. How much money does it generate for the spammers?
>>> How much money does it generate for the spammers?
Because the cost of sending out a single email is fractions of a penny, and they can churn out millions of em a day, even the miniscule response rate that they get can generate a ton of dough.
My company owns a division called EmailResults.net . The messages I sent are permission-based. You get email marketing based on personal interests from national brands. In other words, stuff you can use.
Doing business the legit way is VERY hard. ISP's treat my company the same as any other illegitimate email marketer. I frequently have to send contact records validating my database to these ISP's so they know not to block my messaging.
The money spammers make is great. It is 99% profit. My model provides about 13% profit but I have larger Fortune advertisers. I could personally make more being a spammer of penis enlargers then this model, but I don't believe in theft and deceit to make a living.
Correct. The real problem is enforcement. The goverment is 5 years behind most technology even small businesses uses. Sharing of 5 big databases for intelligence, let's say should be a 6 month TOTAL integration process, but it has taken 3 years and is less then 50% complete.
That being said, the goverment is having a very difficult time prosecuting spammers. When they begin systematically prosecuting 50 of these people in federal court a month, spam will begin to decrease domestically.
The figures I've heard are that spammers earn something on the order of $0.0001 per spam. One thing I'd like to see would be a class-action lawsuit against spammers for $0.001458/spam (cost of 1 second of labor at $5.25/hour) plus legal fees. I don't think anyone can plausibly argue that spam costs recipients less than that, but it would raise the cost of spam to over ten times its current retail price.
You're actually overestimating the cost, IMHO. Most ISPs have some sort of "try it for 30 days free!" offer. You sign up under a fake name, shoot out your spam, and walk away from the account without looking back. Cost: Zero. (Zero to you anyway.)
Wasn't that Howard Dean's mass emailer of choice?
User-level ISP accounts aren't usually capable of the volumes of emails spammers send out, are they? Even a small spammer (by today's standards) is going to have to send out gigs per day.
We were one of the companies doing this, yes. It was all for fund-raising activities using the Dean house list of registered voters.
Dean got in trouble when they hired a company out of Boca Raton (big mistake). This company blasted about 10 million unsolicited messages to the Internet community. A poster on Slashdot fingered us but further investigation by the Net community absolved us of responsibility. Dean took a ton of heat for it.
Now that it is election time, I give all my resources to the Republican Party for surveys & polling intelligence.
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