It makes me wonder why spammers bother doing what they do. Every internet savvy user must be aware of spam and UCEs by now and take absolutely no notice of them. In fact it has got to the point where ALL users I know are even deleting bona fide mail-shots (which incidentally, US marketeers please note, is subject to different laws in the UK and EU) without reading them.

The whole exercise is self-defeating so wouldn't it better for the world if spammers would just stop? Let's face it, does anyone REALLY take penis enlargement pills seriously, buy drugs and software from some unknown source who sends you an email, or respond to pump-and-dump emails? I suppose anyone who does deserves to be fleeced and that is who the spammers are after but what proportion of the spammed recipients is that? Pretty much nil I would imagine as most if not all, internet users are pretty intelligent.

All well and good... except that *most* internet users are *not* savvy. The spammers are playing to them.

> Every internet savvy user must be aware of spam and UCEs by now

That'll be you, me, and about 1% of the rest of the internet-using population. Ask yourself how these spams are propogated. If you reply bot-nets of malware-infested Windows boxen owned by the clueless, then you answered your own question.

-A.

I've always thought that if you are stupid enough to fall for these sort of schemes then you've only got yourself to blame. And for that matter you shouldn't be using a computer if you don't understand the risks.

So yes I probably am a complete git.

You send a hundred thousand emails a day. One in a thousand people are dumb enough to buy (this is reasonable; you probably have known far fewer than a thousand people - now think about the dumbest person you ever met). Your average sale is, say, $60, with a profit margin probably over $40. So say $40 on each sale.

You're profiting $4,000 per day. A hundred and twenty grand a month. If you send 200k emails a day - well, do the math.

And you can do this with almost zero effort.

That's why spammers spam.

"Pretty much nil I would imagine as most if not all, internet users are pretty intelligent."

Haha, good one :-)

I have been getting these for nearly a month and had |.fdf in assp for just as long. I am shocked that the av folks have taken this long to notice.

My understanding was that, once they've done the initial work of defeating the latest security upgrades, they can hit so many people so quickly and cheaply that the tiny percentage of incredibly dumb respondents still adds up to a healthy profit.

Either that or there are even more morons in the world than previously supposed... either option seems like a contender.

http://www.straightoutleodis.blogspot.com

Ahh, if only.

I think the key thing with spamming is that the investment (time, materials) is so small that there is no incentive *not* to spam if you know how to do it properly. When you can target so a vast number of people, even if only a fraction of a percent respond you've done okay.

Spammers spam because only one or two hits out of a million is needed to make a profit. Somebody out there has a small willy and is too embarassed to go to the doctor. Apparently they sever the shaft tissue from the pelvis and yank it out to give you an extra inch or so. Maybe that's what's putting them off. Pump and dump is just about finding new suckers.

No not everyone is so intelligent no

it's a really bad time to invest in anything

and I think probably if you try hard you can

figure out that yes it is useful to spam

otherwise they wouldn't do it. Quite a

lot of spam has other motives apart

from advertising it's also used for phishing

and for creating zombies for botnets.

I have just come from reading about the

subprime meltdown and there is really

going to be a mess soon it's bad it's going

to get worse stupid stupid bankers.

Provided it touches on their hopes. Remember the First Rule: "People will believe something because they want it to be true or because they fear it is."

My mother, one of the most genuinely intelligent people I know, required an hour of convincing that the "Stuff envelopes at home" mail she'd received was a fraud through and through. She doesn't want to go back to work, and it provided her with an outlet for that want - that's the way spammers work. There's always someone who will believe it.

Sigh. Really does remove all hope for humanity eh?

The problem isn't that the clueless get hurt, or how you feel about that, but that their responding sustains the spammers. If the response rate was zero, rather than merely very small, then spam would stop for everyone.

I'm displaying my investment ignorance but I've often wondered if purchasing a put option on stock I noticed being pumped by spammers would be profitable.

If at the zenith of the pump you find somebody willing to write a put option for quarter end I reckon you might make money (assuming that's when the market realizes the share is overvalued).

Usually by the time you see it, it's too late to take advantage of most p&d scams. You can try writing put options, but the market is often illiquid. You also run the risk of finding yourself investigated. While it's true that most likely nothing will come of it, you'll have legal expenses to cover. And, "most likely". Many, many people have gone to jail on the backs of circumstantial evidence.

In a previous thread on this very site, someone talked about having analyzed pump and dump stocks. What he did was, as soon as he received a stock spam, he went to look at the price and logged that as if he had bought 1000 shares (they're penny stocks, so a few bucks in all).

Then he went back a few days later to find out the new price. One stock in over forty tries had a positive result.

This report (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=920553) is not the thread I mentioned, but the conclusion is quite clear :

"Before brokerage fees, the average investor who buys a stock on the day it is most heavily touted and sells it 2 days after the touting ends will lose close to 5.5%."

Poised to go very high. Look, it once was over $100 per share. Now for a cheap $0.43.

You heard it here first!!

They spam because the costs are so ridiculously low that it almost can't fail to make money. If it didn't, they wouldn't bother. But that would require the tiny number of idiots who respond to spam to stop buying crap from spammers.

Now, if ISPs could somehow detect when a user clicks through from a spam to a spam site and buys something, and cut their service off immediately with no refund or recourse, people might learn that buying from spammers is Bad and Hurts The Internet. Maybe name and shame the buggers too, just for added effect.

Actually Andy, quite a lot of those malware infested boxES are compromised Linux shared hosting servers. So many web hosts pay no regard to security when setting up their servers. Security breaches are not the exclusive domain of Windows.