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Ignoring the effect of McColo, I wonder how the recession has affected spammers. Are they making more money or less? People "down on their luck" might buy more

by RK 18y ago

Ignoring the effect of McColo, I wonder how the recession has affected spammers. Are they making more money or less? People "down on their luck" might buy more dubious crap. Businesses in more desperate times might use less "palatable" marketing than they normally would.

mahmud 18y ago
They are making more. With so many people scared for their future financial stability, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that more people are more likely to fall for a "get rich quick" scam. Sex-related spam might go down with respect to male targets also, but you can bet some spam will appear targeting women with "get rich quick stripping online (doing phone sex), etc". Spam and most blackhat businesses are just that, business. The operators are your average greedy bastards, the great majority of whom are technically incapable twenty something men who think "the internet" is still in a dotcom boom. I'm not pulling this out of thin air, all you have to do is lurk in spam boards to see the prevailing mythology; a huge majority of 20-something spammers who want to live the Hip Hop lifestyle and who will do anything for money. They themselves get scammed left and right by everyone from competent systems programmers who sell them backdoored tools to sophisticated mafiosi who open fly-by-night "online banks" to fake advertising networks that lure them into distributing their spam links and malware and then fold just when it's time to pay up, not to mention the ponzi schemes. The life of a spammer is a bitch. If you were dealing drugs you at least have your tangible goods in hand and cash proceeds in the other. Spamming is like drug dealing, except someone keeps your stash and drop-ships it, and another keeps your cash and gives you a metered ATM card, nickle and diming you in every step of the way. So the question becomes, what sort of spammer is making the real money (or the most of it) instead of asking if all spammers are making moolah. And the answer would be, the guys getting paid are not exactly in the spamming business :-)
- patio11 18y ago
  I just want to say that this post comports to my experiences when I spent a year on spam boards. (My employer was working on an anti-spam product -- know your enemy and all that.)

by RK 18y ago

mahmud 18y ago

They are making more. With so many people scared for their future financial stability, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that more people are more likely to fall for a "get rich quick" scam. Sex-related spam might go down with respect to male targets also, but you can bet some spam will appear targeting women with "get rich quick stripping online (doing phone sex), etc". Spam and most blackhat businesses are just that, business. The operators are your average greedy bastards, the great majority of whom are technically incapable twenty something men who think "the internet" is still in a dotcom boom. I'm not pulling this out of thin air, all you have to do is lurk in spam boards to see the prevailing mythology; a huge majority of 20-something spammers who want to live the Hip Hop lifestyle and who will do anything for money. They themselves get scammed left and right by everyone from competent systems programmers who sell them backdoored tools to sophisticated mafiosi who open fly-by-night "online banks" to fake advertising networks that lure them into distributing their spam links and malware and then fold just when it's time to pay up, not to mention the ponzi schemes. The life of a spammer is a bitch. If you were dealing drugs you at least have your tangible goods in hand and cash proceeds in the other. Spamming is like drug dealing, except someone keeps your stash and drop-ships it, and another keeps your cash and gives you a metered ATM card, nickle and diming you in every step of the way. So the question becomes, what sort of spammer is making the real money (or the most of it) instead of asking if all spammers are making moolah. And the answer would be, the guys getting paid are not exactly in the spamming business :-)

patio11 18y ago
I just want to say that this post comports to my experiences when I spent a year on spam boards. (My employer was working on an anti-spam product -- know your enemy and all that.)