Attacking the Spammer Business Model 655
Stephen Samuel asks: "Spammers spam because it's an 'easy way to make money'. They send out millions of spams knowing that 99.995% of them will be ignored, but the other 0.005% of responses are pure gold (Andrew Leung at Telus has an excellent report on the economics of spam). Responses to mortage spams are reportedly worth $50.00 each. What would happen if, instead of technical and legal approaches, we simply started attacking their business model? If people
started responding to just 1% of the spam we received, spammers would drown in the responses, and the mortage spam responses wouldn't be worth an email, much less $50. The Nigerian Sweet Revenge is an example of this. The nice thing about this sort of statistical approach is that it would start to reward spammers for sending out -fewer- emails. (fewer emails -> fewer bogus responses). What other ways can people think of to attack the spammer business models, and what are the expected downsides of such approaches?" Of course, the one major drawback to this is the likelihood of more spam, since you'll be giving them a valid email address. However, many of you may be receiving increasing amount of spam as it is (even through your filters) so might an organized spam-the-spammers movement work?
Richest spammers could afford to handle replies (Score:5, Insightful)
Now what about sending them bogus email addresses and phony information? That would send them on a wild goose chase.
Ironic, don't you think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorting through a pile of junk to get the stuff you're looking for. Sound familiar email junkies?
The Best Way to Attack Spammers (Score:3, Insightful)
What you should do if you are serious about getting on the nerves of some spammers is create an extra e-mail address for yourself that you send responses to spammers with, and get replies(maybe) in. Eventually, you could take all of those spam messages in that email box to a judge somewhere and win yourself a considerable amount at the pocket of a crass spammer somewhere.
So long as we can outthink them, we can win.
Re:Bogus spams? (Score:5, Insightful)
Reply. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:in the short run... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Richest spammers could afford to handle replies (Score:5, Insightful)
No good for invalid reply-to addreses (Score:3, Insightful)
Frequently, I get spam that seems to be selling NOTHING. The reply-to is invalid, and they don't bother including any kind of URL.
On the bright side, the vast majority of my spam gets caught in the filters - so I only see it if I check the spam folder. And may the spam rot there...
Spam their 800 numbers.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It feels good to cost the spammers some money, even if it does waste your time to do it.
The BIG Problem here..... (Score:4, Insightful)
The number of spam emails that get through SpamAssassin because of forged "From:" headers is ridiculous. And worse is the number of bounce messages I get because someone has used my email address as the "From:" header in a massive spam mailout.
Not applicable to most spam (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spam their 800 numbers.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Best to call from the fax machine at work or some other "useless" number.
Blacklisting for spammers (Score:3, Insightful)
Namely, the very methods we've come up with to avoid spam would work for the spammers.
How long do you think it would take before, in addition to lists of live email addresses, spammers also begin keeping lists of "people wasting our time"? I'd give it a week, if this really caught on suddenly.
For that matter, I believe this would leave them in a better position than now, since they'd not only have a list of people who won't buy from them (allowing them to cull their list of live email addresses a bit), but also a list of people likely to actually take steps to stop spammers.
Think about that for a minute - The few spammers we have managed to put out of business have gotten nabbed by a few small groups of dedicated, annoyed, and technologically-saavy people. Taking action along the recommended lines would give the spammers a way to identify and steer clear of similar groups of people.
While some of us may consider that a win ("they don't bother me anymore"), I think most of us realize that we need to do more to stop spam than unclog our own individual inboxes - We need to permanantly shut down all spammers in general. Or, put another way, my filters already block most of the spam I get (literally over 300/day now). That doesn't do a damn thing to help friends and relatives who don't understand how to maintain a good filter (like it or not, good spam filters require a fairly high level of understanding about the workings of email to properly tune - Not so much to simply block spam, but more importantly, to not block legit email).
I like that people keep thinking about this problem, and eventually look forward to a good solution. This does not seem like "the" solution, though.
Re:Filters that fight back... (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't distinguish between good guys and bad guys. In fact none of the "automatic" schemes mentioned do. Say the spammers decide they hate Paul, they can very easily deliver several spams pointing to his web site/email address/phone number. Remember that the cost of sending extra emails by a spammer is pretty much zero.
The spammers are already picking on the anti-spam people. [theregister.co.uk]
So how will your auto-responders etc tell the difference between bad guys and good guys?
Re:Filters that fight back... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:automated replies / anon remailers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Richest spammers could afford to handle replies (Score:4, Insightful)
UMM Can you say distributed denial of service? (Score:3, Insightful)
Distributed Denial Of Service & Joe Jobs (Score:3, Insightful)
causes major problems if someone forges.
Example: a disgruntled employeee forges
many emails about his company's products.
When your anti-spam army calls for info,
they overload the company's phone system.
This is called a Joe Job, and is bad and wrong.
Why? Imagine it done to a hospital phone line.
Spam is a real problem. This is not the answer.
If you want ideas, try this overview [netextend.com]
Cheers, Joel
Won't work... not that way anyways (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally, your assertion that it would incentivate less spam from individual spammers is wrong, since the ratio of fake to real responses is the same for a large mailing list as it is for a smaller one. In other words, you have "constant returns to spam." The only way it would incentivate less spam is if you managed to drive some of the spammers out of business. More likely, it would lead to more spam, as spammers scramble to find more addresses to offset their lower "spam margin."
Re:Richest spammers could afford to handle replies (Score:3, Insightful)
Find out who owns the netblock before you go DDoS'ing everything you find objectionable. You're probably hurting someone who has nothing to do with it.
Re:The Best Way to Attack Spammers (Score:3, Insightful)
If you go to the web site and fill in the details with bogus-but-almost accurate data, they won't be able to contact you, and you get to flood them with 'spam' referrals. If its a telephone number to call... well, make sure you get through to a person, walk them through the whole 'yes, of course I want x' routine, then hang up right at the point where they ask for completion.
Even better is to get them to send a salesman round, as you obviously really would like to hear more about their other products, then.. tell him to sod off when he arrives. Or give them the address of big dave and his pit bull breeding business.
The whole point isn't anything to do with email - but to give the spammer's *client* so much bad referrals they'll accept that spamming is not an acceptable (from their point of view) means of selling.
Re:in the short run... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, not necessarily. The trick is to craft "leads" that are obviously bogus to a human at the mortgage company, but aren't easily filtered by a machine.
What makes this especially interesting is that, in other words, it's precisely like creatng spam designed to get around spam filters.
With names that are obviously bogus to people, but mot machine, the bogus "lead" is either
- sent to the mortgage company, which realizes immediately that the "lead" leads nowhere, and pretty soon that too many of the spammer's leads are bogus;
- or, you make the spammer himself weed out the bogus "leads" so as to keep the mortgage company as a client.
The mortgage company (or the spammer, if he's weeding) will quickly realize that "Felix Thecat" and "Kiss M'Ass" are bogus. "Heywood Jablowme" might get by a weeder, but won't last too long at the mortgage ccompany. "Gloria Mundi" probably gets several calls before somebody at the mortgage company remembers high school Latin or a Roman Catholic upbringing.While a dictionary of first names will allow some machine weeding, could a 95% coverage of last names be built? What percent coverage of last names is needed to keep a mortgage spammer from being dumped by the mortgage spammer? What's the distribution of last names? Help me out, Slashdot.
Re:New Internet Business Model (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:3 Lawyers, 3 geeks (Score:4, Insightful)
The bread and butter of the credit companies lies in standard retail purchases.. The idea here is that by exerting pressure on the credit card companies you can cut spam off at the source (the companies who finance it in the first place), as their lifeblood is most definitely in credit card purchases. In other words, they have much more to lose than MC/Visa do. At the same time it exerts tremendous pressure on the middle men who create these accounts in the first place.. they MOST DEFINITELY need the support of the credit card companies or they don't have a livelehood.
Assuming the fundamental thesis is true (these companies are in fact breaking the law with spam), this is the most plausible plan of attack I've seen yet.
Not entrapment.... (Score:1, Insightful)
I like this plan.
Re:in the short run... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Richest spammers could afford to handle replies (Score:2, Insightful)
The REAL fix... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Richest spammers could afford to handle replies (Score:5, Insightful)
Those reputable companies might be a bit more careful in future to ensure that they aren't selling to spammers - by doing background checks, by educating their customers (for those spammers who don't actually realise it's a bad idea) and by being very public about kicking spammers when they're caught.
Provide a strong enough financial dis-incentive to host spammers and eventually spam friendly ISPs will dry up - but while there's profit to be made hosting spamers, then of course these "reputable companies" will 'accidentally' host them.
Business Model? You call spamming a Business Model (Score:2, Insightful)
Brilliant (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely the best post in this whole thread. Bravo.
The need to process credit cards is the weak link in much of the spam business, and it is very hard for them to work around an inability to obtain the services of a merchant credit card account.
"THOU SHALT NOT SPAM" = Seven Revival... (Score:2, Insightful)
News -- Spammer go to jail after opening 198 mortgage loans
News -- Spammer suffer heart attack, found covered with what looks like dermo patches and surrounded weird "New Pa Tch sdogh Here only" messages...
I can see myself following the news more eagerly 8)
Re:Richest spammers could afford to handle replies (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Richest spammers could afford to handle replies (Score:3, Insightful)
However, it is not. What is being suggested (And you might want to read the post, if not the article...) is to resond with email, not in a multiple reply per person fashion, but rather just to reply, and make the spammer go through 5000 replies per spam attack, so that it takes several hours to find the one respondant that genuinely wants a morgage. This is NOT DDOS, or even flooding the server, but simply a function of the time of the spammer to get a genuine response since it is now 1%, or better
The only problem that I see is that the first 10,000 or so people that start doing this will really just be confirming the email address for the spammer, and will be burned for it.
PS. Maybe slashdot needs some kind of m3 program, where people who mod up stupidity, or off-topic responses are shot, or at least lose their ability to mod...
Have you responded to spam? (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the source of the info that spam works? That's right, it's the spammers. Spammers tell you that spam works. Bzzzzt! Rule #1: Spammers lie!
Who are the spammer's customers? No, not you who get the spam. The spammer's customers are those who order spam services. And there are enough idiots who buy spam services to make those 180 spammers very wealthy.
Even though the spammer's customer get burnt once and stop, well, some of them are probably stupid enough to try several times anyway, there are enough of these morons to keep it going for a very long time.
They're not making a single sale, not even 0.0001%, but that doesn't matter, because the spammer got his money, and that's why this continues.
So, if you want to end spam, forget the spammers: Go after those who purchase spam services instead.
Well, that's my theory. It may not hold up, but after all, this is /.! :-)