—— Forwarded Message From: Gary Lawrence Murphy
The Mercury News (via silicon.com) is running a series of articles on spam this weekend, of which there are few surprises except the confirmation that, whatever we may do, however we may hate it, the sad truth is, spam is highly profitable.
For example, you might shoot down the numbered yahoo account offering porn site subscriptions, but at $50/subscriber, a 0.01% hit rate could net thousands of dollars for a few minutes work; the instigator doesn’t need a very high percent to make it worth their while, and as anonymous affiliates, they insulate the real source of the spam from any reprisals.
The cajun Spam King speaks: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3107708.htm
Big companies bankrolling spam: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3107709.htm
Decent backgrounder on what spam is and how it works: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3108519.htm
— Gary Lawrence Murphy
http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
—— End of Forwarded Message