{"id":7573,"date":"2005-02-01T14:30:56","date_gmt":"2005-02-01T21:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/02\/01\/you-cant-win-for-losing.html"},"modified":"2005-02-01T14:30:56","modified_gmt":"2005-02-01T21:30:56","slug":"you_cant_win_fo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/02\/01\/you_cant_win_fo.html","title":{"rendered":"You can’t win for losing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A rather depressing article from the New York Times implies that one reason why spam continues to rise in numbers is because anti-spam stuff keeps getting better<\/a> — meaning that spammers have to increase volume to get a profitable amount through, launching ever larger “human wave attacks” up from the trenches and into your computer.<\/p>\n

She and others note that filtering software has become particularly adept at catching the vast majority of spam before it ever gets to a user’s in-box. Legitimate e-mail messages do sometimes get caught in such nets – a drawback that generates its own chorus of complaints. But some specialists have also suggested that the overall success of identifying and weeding out junk e-mail from in-boxes may actually help explain the current surge in spam. “The more effective the filtering technology,” Ms. Mitchell said, “the more spam they have to send to get the same dollar rate of return.”<\/p>\n

Those rates of return can be staggeringly high (and the costs of entry into the market relatively low). A spammer can often expect to receive anywhere from a 25 percent to a 50 percent commission on any sales of a product that result from a spam campaign, according to a calculus developed by Richi Jennings, an Internet security analyst with Ferris Research, a technology industry consulting firm.<\/p>\n

Even if only 2,000 of 200 million recipients of a spam campaign – a single day’s response rate for some spammers – actually go to a merchant’s Web site to purchase a $50 bottle of an herbal supplement, a spammer working at a 25 percent commission will take in $25,000. If a spammer makes use of anonymous virus-enslaved computers to spread the campaign, expenses like bandwidth payments to Internet service providers are low – as is the likelihood of anyone’s tracking down who pushed the “send” button.<\/p>\n

And legislative approaches have only driven spammers into overseas havens.<\/p>\n

And bulletproof services like Mr. Gillespie’s and another, Buprhost.com, are intent on continuing to offer spam-friendly merchants a haven from antispam complaints, starting at $89 a month.<\/p>\n

“If your Web site host receives complaints or discovers that your Web site has been advertised in e-mail broadcasts, they may disconnect your account and shut down your Web site,” explains Buprhost.com, which promises no such disruptions. “The reason we can do this is that we put your Web site in our overseas server where the local law will protect your Web sites.”<\/p>\n

Swell.<\/p>\n

(via Volokh<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rather depressing article from the New York Times implies that one reason why spam continues to rise in numbers is because anti-spam stuff keeps getting better — meaning that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3977,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/05\/missing_the_poi.html","url_meta":{"origin":7573,"position":0},"title":"Missing the point","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 5-Mar-03 7:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"How, um, stupid is it to send an unsolicited commercial e-mail to someone touting how great your spam filtering software is? 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