[Gllug] spam

[damion.yates at gmail.com]

On Fri, 7 Aug 2009, John G Walker wrote:

> On Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:23:00 +0100 Jason Clifford <jason at ukfsn.org>
> wrote:
> 
> > > What do they gain by sending these spam email ?   
> > 
> > There are a number of reasons they send spam. The primary one is to
> > make money from the idiots who reply to it one way and another.
> > Another reason is to poison anti-spam systems so as to reduce their
> > effectiveness in blocking spam.
> 
> Strictly speaking, the spammers have already made their money at the
> time they send the email to you. This is because spamming is a
> two-stage process (at least). There are the people who make their
> money sending out spam. They are essentially agencies. Then there are
> the people who pay them, much in the same way that they might buy
> advertising space in a newspaper or advertising time on a radio
> station. I have been told that the economics of spamming is such that,
> for the second group, who are trying to sell you stuff, they only need
> a positive response from 0.01% of the emails sent out in order to make
> a profit. Whether this figure is based on genuine research or is
> (educated?) guesswork, I couldn't say.

Possibly nothing more than missinformation from the first group.  I'm
sure there are enough mugs out there thinking it must work otherwise why
is there so much spam, that the 1st group just have to keep collecting
money from the second.

Damion

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