"The 4 Ws
of Junk E-mail."
By Niall Roche
Junk e-mail or spam has become the scourge of
the modern computer world. It eats bandwidth. Spam is like a disease.
It doesn’t care about age, religion, wealth. It doesn’t
discriminate. Junk e-mail affects us all.
There are 4 keys to the junk mail question –
Who, What, Where and Why.
Who they are
The typical profile of a junk mail sender is
as follows. Male, 18 – 30 years of age, single, technically
competent and with little regard for their status as a public
nuisance. There are female junk mailers out there but, unfortunately,
this is predominantly a male preserve.
What they use to send spam
There are many tools available to the spam merchant.
The main ones are e-mail extractors, newsgroup harvesters and
CD lists.
E-mail extractors are programs which wander around
the Internet gathering e-mail addresses from websites and often
from web based forums (unprotected forums). A “good”
e-mail extractor can gather 15,000 e-mail addresses per hour.
Newsgroup harvesters are programs which search
through newsgroups for valid e-mail addresses. Most newsgroups
users are aware of this and take measures to counteract these
harvesting programs. Despite these measures a newsgroup harvester
application can gather 20,000 – 30,000 e-mail addresses
in an hour.
CD lists are one of the worst sources. 90 million
e-mail addresses available on a single CD for as little as $20.
A lot of the addresses on these CDs would be junk (many would
no longer exist) but an equally large number of these addresses
would be valid. A CD like this is a junk mailers dream.
Where they do it from
Those involved in sending out bulk e-mail are
“entrepreneurs” or at least they think so. The vast
majority of those involved in the spam business are self-employed
and work from home. Sending spam is almost the ideal home based
business. You name your hours and the business itself is almost
automatic. Maximum gain from minimum effort.
Why they do it in the first place
Their motivation is money. Considerable amounts
of cash actually. Each spammer who sends out 1,000,000 junk e-mails
is certain of approximately 100 sales. Many of the products they
sell are worth $50 - $100 dollars to them in commission. Yes.
Shocking isn’t it? The average bulk mailer earns in excess
of $100,000 per year! Maximum return for minimum effort. Unless
of course you get caught and get jail time.
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