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Hi HN, I'm an author on this paper and would be happy to answer any questions you might have about it. It was a huge effort by a lot of great people and a lot o

Hi HN, I'm an author on this paper and would be happy to answer any questions you might have about it. It was a huge effort by a lot of great people and a lot of fun to do. Here's John Markoff's writeup for the nytimes, it doesn't seem linked from the techreview site: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20spam.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20spam.html

Matt_Cutts 15y ago
I just wanted to say that I really appreciated this research--thanks for doing this work. It sounds like you purchased items from email spam; have you considered doing a similar study for items that are spamming search engines instead of email?
- waitwhatwhoa 15y ago
  We focused on email spam because that's been our area of expertise for the past few years. Some of these programs are well represented in SEO spam as well - with affiliate programs like these, they don't much care how you bring them the customer traffic as long as it arrives. We haven't, however, looked into the programs that are exclusively advertised via SEO but it's definitely on our list. Most of our methodology will carry over, we just have to straighten out how to create some sort of canonical feed of SEO'd pharma links. I'd also like to personally thank you for your employer's generosity in supporting this research :).
911-inside_job 15y ago
Did you asked your bank to cancel the payments? If you haven't I'll hold you personally responsible for encouraging all those spammers ;-)
- waitwhatwhoa 15y ago
  We (and also I am pretty sure our lawyer) consider that to be defrauding the spammers, and even though some people might consider that ethical, we don't (also we're pretty sure it's not legal either).
guard-of-terra 15y ago
Based on your research: What's the chance of actually receiving the ordered meds? What's the chance that the meds would be of reasonable quality (right formula, etc)? What's the chance that the card used for transaction would be defrauded? I.e. charged another sum after some time or whatever.
- waitwhatwhoa 15y ago
  To answer your questions: very high chance of actually receiving, the active ingredient is correct and in the correct concentration (we didn't test the binder/other trace elements), and in a pilot study we saw a LOT of fraudulent charge attempts, but during and after the 3 month period of this study we did not see any fraudulent transactions (we were specifically watching for this as we had seen it in the pilot study).
  - juddlyon 15y ago
    I found it surprising that product was actually shipped. I've always assumed they'd take your money and run. Fascinating work. Thanks.
  - guard-of-terra 15y ago
    What was the difference between pilot study and the "regular" study? I wonder where did that difference in fraud/no fraud came from.
    - waitwhatwhoa 15y ago
      The biggest difference is that we were using the same cards several times, and in this study we only used the cards once each. At this point everything is speculation, so I really can't say anything one way or another as to why this happened.

Matt_Cutts 15y ago

I just wanted to say that I really appreciated this research--thanks for doing this work. It sounds like you purchased items from email spam; have you considered doing a similar study for items that are spamming search engines instead of email?

waitwhatwhoa 15y ago
We focused on email spam because that's been our area of expertise for the past few years. Some of these programs are well represented in SEO spam as well - with affiliate programs like these, they don't much care how you bring them the customer traffic as long as it arrives. We haven't, however, looked into the programs that are exclusively advertised via SEO but it's definitely on our list. Most of our methodology will carry over, we just have to straighten out how to create some sort of canonical feed of SEO'd pharma links. I'd also like to personally thank you for your employer's generosity in supporting this research :).

911-inside_job 15y ago

Did you asked your bank to cancel the payments? If you haven't I'll hold you personally responsible for encouraging all those spammers ;-)

waitwhatwhoa 15y ago
We (and also I am pretty sure our lawyer) consider that to be defrauding the spammers, and even though some people might consider that ethical, we don't (also we're pretty sure it's not legal either).

guard-of-terra 15y ago

Based on your research: What's the chance of actually receiving the ordered meds? What's the chance that the meds would be of reasonable quality (right formula, etc)? What's the chance that the card used for transaction would be defrauded? I.e. charged another sum after some time or whatever.

waitwhatwhoa 15y ago
To answer your questions: very high chance of actually receiving, the active ingredient is correct and in the correct concentration (we didn't test the binder/other trace elements), and in a pilot study we saw a LOT of fraudulent charge attempts, but during and after the 3 month period of this study we did not see any fraudulent transactions (we were specifically watching for this as we had seen it in the pilot study).
- juddlyon 15y ago
  I found it surprising that product was actually shipped. I've always assumed they'd take your money and run. Fascinating work. Thanks.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  What was the difference between pilot study and the "regular" study? I wonder where did that difference in fraud/no fraud came from.
  - waitwhatwhoa 15y ago
    The biggest difference is that we were using the same cards several times, and in this study we only used the cards once each. At this point everything is speculation, so I really can't say anything one way or another as to why this happened.