@ogilmor said:
@AlpineR said:
really wonder where's
the profit in those spams that give stock tips or offer mortgage
refinancing. Have those ploys ever worked? Maybe once, but I doubt the
copycats have much success.
.I haven't read a lot about the spam industry lately but here's what i gather, 1) new laws have made it harder to make money that way, 2) the big league spammers have gone offshore to avoid said laws, 3) the "cottage spammers", AKA "Losers" that you describe who use home spambot kits and that kind of crap, it is becoming easier to filter them out through better junk mail filtering. Thank goodness (has anybody gotten anything OTHER than spam from prodigy lately?....)
Even the free email accounts like Yahoo have pretty good filtering now.
Also, if you ask for it it's not really SPAM. Many's the time when I thought, "sure I'll get your newsletter", then wondered why I ever did [*-)]
Oh dear, something I actually know something about. I handle abuse desk for a fairly large email service provider.
Stock tips are pump and dump scams. There are enough gullible people who buy such stock.
Mortgage leads are _big_ business. I know someone who seeds such spams with false names and addresses, but his own phone number. He gets about 5 to 6 calls every day offering mortgages.
The big spammers are using zombies to send their spam. They haven't gone out of business, just out of your inbox. That doesn't help much on the server side of the business.
Oh, and if you asked for it, it is not spam by any stretch of the word. Spam is Unsolicited Bulk Email (or Messaging if you prefer). If it isn't Unsolicited, it isn't spam. If it isn't bulk, it isn't spam.
SPAM is (tm) Hormel.