Jason Levine
Premium
join:2001-07-13
USA
| reply to Brownbay
Re: Aren't We forgetting
said by Brownbay  :Can someone explain a few things here... 1. How the hell did he rake in so much cash from spamming? Sure the company he's spamming for would pay him... but this much? It's easy. If a spammer sends out 10 million e-mails and 1/100th of 1 percent buy an average of $10 worth of material, the spammer has earned $10,000. His costs are relatively low since he foists the bandwidth costs on others (via open relays and/or trojaned systems). After a few mailings, he'll be able to earn more than most of the folks who hang out here.
Of course, this is a simplification. Not all spammers are successful. Some wind up being multi-millionaires and some wind up dirt poor. Some, like the spammer from the article, might make millions and then get caught and have them taken away.
said by Brownbay :2. Can we not go after companies that stoop so low as to employ spammers to market their products? And if so, why aren't we? The problem is tracking the money. Sometimes the companies genuinely don't know that their products are being offered via spam. Sometimes, in the case of software, the real sellers are stores that would otherwise sell the product legitimately via a web site or a physical shop. Sometimes the product is pirated and being sold. Should we punish Symantec because a pirated copy of Norton Anti-Virus is being sold via spam?
Even if the spam is being paid for directly by the company, most companies will be smart enough to cover their tracks. They'll claim that they didn't know that the person they hired was spamming. In short, it's not as easy as it sounds.
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-Jason Levine
http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/
http://www.PCQandA.com/
http://www.urateit.com/ |
