Those who know me might have heard me rant about spam before. There are many things which make spam a problem these days. In no particular order:
- The spammers themselves of course.
- The network/system admins which allow spam to go outside their network (For one – any ISP which does not block port 25 outgoing except from designates servers is no worse then a polluter spilling waste into a river).
- The people who write operating systems (Read: Microsoft here) which are so often vulnerable to getting taken over by hackers and used to send spam.
- Companies who send legitimate e-mails to their customers which LOOK more fraudulent then the real scams.
- And most of all – the retarded people who ACTUALLY BUY things from spam.
That last one is the one which bothers me most. Now maybe ten years ago, back when spam wasn’t as prevalent as it is now, and when the spammers didn’t have to fight against filtering, someone might have thought they were getting a deal I guess if they were slightly gullible. But who in their RIGHT MIND would buy something which was advertised like below?
Subject: Re: VlbAGRA
Hi, GREAT VlbAGRA http://www.MISCELLANEOUSSPAMMER.com So what do you want us for? Floyd asked. The creatures words were drowned out by a throbbing roar and a cloud
or the ‘Pump and Dump’ scams (This is where they try to get you to buy some random penny stock that the sender of the spam bought a ton of but is not involved directly with. As soon as people ‘buy it for the great deal’ advertised in the spam, they sell the stock leaving themselves with a big profit and the people who bought it because of the scam high and dry.):
RANDOMSTOCKTICKERNAME – Add it NOW! Major PR campaign starting next week on RANDOMSTOCKTICKERNAME – GET it early! WATCH RANDOMSTOCKTICKERNAME trde on monday – act Now. elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had not been the case. comfortable home; and considering mr. collins’s character, connection, and situation in life, i am”wickham is not so undeserving, then, as we thought him,” said her sister. “my dear father, i
I refuse to do their dirty work so their URLs and the name of the Stock are replaced.
I mean – who would buy medicine from something like the first one – or buy a stock based on financial information given out in a message like the one above? It was bad enough years ago – but now when they need to put in all the random crap you see to get around filters – honestly – who would buy this? I want to find people like this because they should be institutionalized. These are people who should not have control of their own financials.
But what it comes down to is – if people stop buying from the spammers – they will stop spamming. As it is now – if even a hundred people buy from them and they are sending millions of e-mail out – they are making money. And they will keep doing so. And all the technical countermeasures that we can use are just making it more difficult and making legitimate e-mail more of a pain.
