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Subject: The Spam Economy |
One of the Internet's most enduring subjects. I just read an excellent
article in one of my trade magazines that felt was important enough to pass on.
The biggest spammers make millions per month. Scott Richter, the spam king,
agreed to pay Microsoft $7million in damages last year
The Spam Cycle
1. E-mail address collection - also known as harvesting.
2. This done through grabbing emails on web sites, sending virus worms to PCs
and using different combinations of users in front of legit addresses.
3.The one time cost for buying a mailing list for millions of addresses is
around $60.
4. Spam run - the spammer sends out millions of messages from zombie or
compromised servers.
5. Spam site creation - the spammer creates an on-line store from which
prospective customers can place orders from the spam messages sent out. Sites
are never up more then a few days before they are removed.
6. Revenue generation - the three top products are porn web sites, sex related
products and home refinancing.
7. 21% of the public has purchased from spammers at one time or
another.
8. Spam Filters - the most effective way to combat spam is actually causing
spammers to send out more spam and are getting more creative to get by filters.
9. Server side spam filters that are backed and maintained by companies are
more effective and upgrade much quicker then filters on workstations.
10. The average person without a spam filter spends 2 hours per week deleting
spam.
11. The average person with a spam filter spends around 45 minutes per week
reviewing messages that have been blocked for accuracy. Server side spam
filters drop this by around 15 minutes per week.