Article on the business of spam; "spam queen"

link to article in wsj; no registration required

[stlouislouis]

[online.wsj.com...]

Interesting article with a lot of facts and numbers on the
business of spam...and its profitability. Sounds like spam
isn't going away any time soon.

FYI,

Louis

[edited by: stlouislouis at 3:29 pm (utc) on Nov. 13, 2002]

[korkus2000]

I would not let every one know who I am or where I lived or what I looked like if that was my living.

[Liane]

Couldn't agree more Korkus. She obviously doesn't understand just how angry spam mail makes people. I pity her poor kids who now have had their mother's job made public to millions of angry spam recipients.

I think I'd be packing up and moving in a big hurry!

[richlowe]

She does understand how angry people get - she just does not have sufficient ethical values to realize that what she is doing is (a) spam, (b) undesired, and (c) harming people.

In other words, she makes excuses (typical of people who have no ethics) to justify her slimmy behavior and to make herself feel better.

Richard Lowe

[rogerd]

Her stats show why spammers persist - she's able to break even with a .001% response rate. Direct marketers using postal mail probably need 1 - 2% to break even. The latter forces some discipline in selecting lists to avoid going broke. The spam breakeven point is so low that the only incentive is to mail more addresses at a higher frequency. Somebody needs to get on Florida's case to pass an anti-spam law...

[korkus2000]

I think the responsability should be with those who own mail servers. Generating millions of emails from a mail server should be a red flag IMHO. I doubt most of these email spammers own there own mail server. That is where to enforce any spam rule. Some will say you could just leave the country. I think we could block ips or something through an orginazation or somewhere to prevent this (I have always heard that the US has the servers that dole out the ips and routing for the world. I could be wrong but somewhere there is a gate that could be locked.). I don't mind getting email from merchants, but the same spam all the time gets old. Unfortunatly when something is as free and as open as the Internet people will abuse it until it gets regulated. :(

[richlowe]

I think the responsability should be with those who own mail servers.

There are several organizations that blacklist open relays and spamming ISPs and such. Spamcop, Spamhaus, Maps, dnsrbl all come to mind. These work exceptionally well because they basically say, if your server is the source of spam we will blacklist EVERYTHING from your server. Period.

Of course the marketers don't like this much, but hey, the internet is NOT about marketing, much as they would like to believe it. The internet is about communication and information and perhaps entertainment. Selling and marketing falls way down on the list of what hte people want to use the internet for.

Don't want your server to be blacklisted? Don't tolerate spamming, don't leave it set up as an open relay and don't spam. Period.

Richard Lowe

[bird]

The interesting part of that article is that they admit to knowingly violate the AUPs of their ISPs, and try to avoid detection by using a dozen different ones at the same time.

"Yes, of course we're a honest and respectable business. We systematically break the contracts we sign."

[creative craig]

That mug shot didnt do her any justice did it ;)

[zuiko]

It sounded like WorldCom was pretty tolerant of spammers unless they became too annoying. Clearly they are aware of her spamming but they don't care unless they get flooded with complaints or she sends too fast.