The Continuing Rise of E-Mail Marketing

Mark Cantrell writes: "Yahoo is running a story from Reuters Internet Report that says that companies like Doubleclick are becoming more popular with online businesses because of the low price they charge. $25 for 1000 people spammed is the example given. They do mention that there is a threat that spam may get out of hand, however. May get? Obviously they haven't seen my mailbox or Usenet lately. My favorite quote from the article: 'I think spam is becoming a problem,' Bluefly's Seiff said. 'Any time you get clutter in your mailboxes, it is not beneficial to e-mail marketers like us.'" The article touches on true spam, but mostly talks about the much more benign stuff lumped under "direct marketing," like reminder updates from stores you cleared to send it to you.

Re:My no spam recipe

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be a bit sceptical about the suggestions that ISPs earn a little side money by selling their customers' addresses.
Until UUNet Belgium reorganized and sold out all their non-professional customers to WorldOnline.

WorldOnline became Tiscali earlier this year, and shortly after that, spam started coming in on an address that had been 100% spamfree for years for the simple reason that I never used it (I had an account at UUnet, but never used the mail address that came with it except for receiving account and service info from UUnet themselves.)

Re:DoubleClick and e-mail

[mosschops]

Opened??!! How the hell'd they know *that*? That sounds like a bogus claim right there.

You can do it using HTML e-mails containing images sourced on external servers. Whenever the e-mail is viewed it requests the image, making it possible to know when it was viewed, and even which customer that viewed it! (using parameters to a script)

That's the main reason I use a software firewall to block outgoing HTTP from my mail client. I'd prefer them to think I'd not seen it, in the hope they'll give up.

Re:One spam story

[funky womble]

Well, that means they were using webbugs - proof that everyone should use mailer agents that either can disable network access or refuse to display HTML.

Some MUAs that are useful for this include:

Mulberry [cyrusoft.com] displays HTML without images (Win/Mac/Linux x86+PPC/Solaris)
The Bat [ritlabs.com] makes it easy to disable HTML. (Win)
Pegasus [pmail.com] normally disables downloading images by http (Win)

A reminder: use sneakemail

[FleaPlus]

For those of us without the resources to run an mail server and create our own email addresses through it, sneakemail [sneakemail.com] is a great resource to limit the amount of spam you get. If any of you haven't heard about sneakemail yet, it's a service that autogenerates email addresses for you (like [e-mail]) which you can give to registration forms or list as a contact email and have forwarded to your real account. If it turns out that the registration form results in spam, you can get rid of that email address, and you also know which registration form it was which resulted in the spam. I really recommend sneakemail to anybody who hasn't tried it yet.

Doubleclick is in the tank

[Animats]

• Stock high: around $125. Today, around $6.
• "DoubleClick's ad serving and data collection practices are also the subject of inquiries by the attorneys general of several states. ... DoubleClick believes that, notwithstanding the quality of defenses available, it is possible that our financial condition and results of operations could be materially adversely affected by the ultimate outcome of the pending litigation." Source: 10-Q filing. [sec.gov]
• "Throughout 2001, our management took certain actions to increase operational efficiencies and bring costs in line with revenues. These measures included the involuntary terminations of approximately 605 employees..."
• "Revenue for DoubleClick Media decreased 66.1% to $27.1 million for the six months ended June 30, 2002 from $79.9 million for the six months ended June 30, 2001."
• "OUR BUSINESS MAY BE MATERIALLY ADVERSELY AFFECTED BY LAWSUITS RELATED TO PRIVACY AND OUR BUSINESS PRACTICES.
  We are a defendant in several lawsuits alleging, among other things, that we unlawfully obtain and use Internet users' personal information and that our use of cookies violates various laws. We are the subject of an inquiry involving the attorneys general of several states relating to our practices in the collection, maintenance and use of information about, and our disclosure of these information practices to, Internet users. We may in the future receive additional regulatory inquiries and we intend to cooperate fully. Class action litigation and regulatory inquiries of these types are often expensive and time consuming and their outcome is uncertain. We cannot quantify the amount of monetary or human resources that we will be required to use to defend ourselves in these proceedings. We may need to spend significant amounts on our legal defense, senior management may be required to divert their attention from other portions of our business, new product launches may be deferred or canceled as a result of these proceedings, and we may be required to make changes to our present and planned products or services, any of which could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. If, as a result of any of these proceedings, a judgment is rendered or a decree is entered against us, it may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations."

That's the reality behind the happy talk. As a company, DoubleClick is shrinking, losing money on operations, and their stockholders lost most of their investment.

Spamcrime does not pay.

Spam trends: flat or declining

[KMSelf]

From a source I can share, spam receipts (daily, flagged by SpamAssassin) are flat since May 1 [iwethey.org]. At work, with a larger sample, I'm actually seeing about an 8% decline over the same interval -- ~55 intercepts daily to 40. Compare this to 2001, where receipts more than doubled over the course of the year. In both cases, I'm using well-known, or catch-all, addresses.

Related news indicates spammers are feeling the pinch of filtering, reporting, and retaliatory efforts. Spam's an economic activity, with low margins. If it can be made unprofitable, prevalence will drop markedly.

...and virus mail's quite another story -- daily intercepts have climbed from ~12/day (Jan - Apr, 2002) to 220+. Thank Klez, though SirCam's putting up a good showing.