The Economics Of Spamming

Shardleton writes "What kind of an idiot would buy penis-enlargement pills? Even more idiotic, who would buy them from a spammer? Apparently LOTS of people, according to this article at Wired. The operators of a spamvertised order site left their customer logs exposed. There were 6,000 orders for the pills since July 4. Sayeth Wired: "Do the math and you begin to understand why spammers are willing to put up with the wrath of spam recipients, Internet service providers and federal regulators.""

And they don't even have to sell anything

Another interesting viewpoint can be found in this article [washtimes.com] which points out that spammers don't even have to sell anything to make money. They mention a number of schemes:

Offering e-mail recipients "free pornography" if they download a software program. The program often provides the pornography, but only after the user's computer dials a 1-900 number to an overseas location, racking up hundreds of dollars in phone charges.

"Pump and dump" stock schemes, in which a spammer sends e-mails touting a certain stock and encourages people to buy it. The stock's value goes up, and spammers sell it at a profit.

Accepting payment for an item without sending it. Spammers bet that someone buying Viagra or pills for the enlargement of body parts would be too embarrassed to call the police or Better Business Bureau.

Of course, if there was ever need for proof that there's a sucker born every minute, just check out this quote from the Wired article:

There was a picture on the top of the page that said, 'As Seen on TV,' and I guess that made me think it was legit.

John.

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

even more amazing is a coherent FP

Re:sh!t

Hehe. I always thought, that crap does not work. Their ripping the customer off. But then I saw the diabolicalness of the whole thing.

"Make your penis HUGE"

The penis reducing pills start at $1000...

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

Accepting payment for an item without sending it. Spammers bet that someone buying Viagra or pills for the enlargement of body parts would be too embarrassed to call the police or Better Business Bureau.

The last reminds me of a scheme a friend and I cooked up in high school, which seemed completely legal to us.

Sell through magazine ads (ok no internet then, just modify for the times) a subscription/package of some pornos, nothing special, maybe just your usual college-girls-gone-wild stuff, for a lower-than-usual price, like 5 or 10 bucks.

Now, you collect a ton of money, then to everyone who sent you cash, you mail them back a letter, explaining that for (whatever reason) you cannot send them the porno they ordered, and you enclose a refund cheque for the full amount.

The catch is, you name you company "Scat-Fetish-Jizz-Gobbler Corporation", or something really sick and embarassing.

You bank on the fact that most people wouldnt suffer the embarassment of facing the bank teller for 5 or 10 bucks.

But you're in the clear - after all you did refund their money.

This was back before ubiquitous ATMs and online payments and all that jazz.

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

Wow! And you and your friend cooked this up [snopes.com] all on your own in high school?

-T

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

"Homer, that was an episode of Happy Days!"

Re:Richard Feynman had to share his Nobel

Well in my day we had pencils, paper, slide rules and APL. Shame that IBM effectively killed it by taking it propriatary.

Ah, the good old days of waking up, eating a cold lump of poison, going to work in mine. . .

Ummmmmm, nevermind.

Feynman was always highly visually oriented. It seems almost natural that he would have developed both useful and unique methods of notation. I'm not sure the current state of academia is suitable for the development of his like. In fact I'm not sure the state of academia at the time was suitable for the development of his like and he really got a bit lucky with the Manhatten project. Luck that benefited us all.

KFG

Lame info schemes

A friend and I actually DID go through with a make money fast scheme. Back in '92 when the Internet was really starting to get buzz, we put an add in Popular Science promsing "Valuable information on the Internet just $10" or something similarly hyped. What they got was some photocopied BS we downloaded ourselves; we even reduced it and double-side copied it to keep our costs down.

We figured it was totally legit since, if you read our ad carefully, we did provide exactly what we promised.

I think we got about 10 requests, which we fulfilled, and we ended up basically breaking even or even losing money.

My new business plan!

Variation: subscription service for intelligence improvement pills. Charge $9.95 for a month's supply. When you get smart enough to stop sending me $9.95 a month for sugar pills I have proof that they obviously worked.

Re:My new business plan!

When you get smart enough to stop sending me $9.95 a month for sugar pills I have proof that they obviously worked.

That's an ancient Jewish joke...

On a train in czarist Russia, a Jew is eating a whitefish wrapped in paper. A man sitting across the aisle begins to taunt him. Finally, he asks: What makes you Jews so smart?" "All right," replies the Jew. "I guess I'll have to tell you. It's because we eat the heads of whitefish." "Well if that's the secret," the man says, then I can be as smart as you are." "That's right," says the Jew, "and in fact I have an extra whitefish head with me. You can have it for five kopecks." The man pays for the fish head and begins to eat it.

An hour later, the train stops at a station for a few minutes. The man leaves the train and then comes back. "Listen, " he says, "you sold me that whitefish head for five kopecks but I just saw a wholewhitefish at the market for three kopecks." "See," replies the Jew, "you're getting smarter already."

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

Courtesy of IMDB, from Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels [imdb.com]:

Listen to this one then; you open a company called the Arse Tickler's Faggot Fan Club. You take an advert in the back page of some gay mag, advertising the latest in arse-intruding dildos, sell it a bit with, er . . . I dunno, "does what no other dildo can do until now", latest and greatest in sexual technology. Guaranteed results or money back, all that bollocks. These dills cost twenty-five each; a snip for all the pleasure they are going to give the recipients. They send a cheque to the company name, nothing offensive, er, Bobbie's Bits or something, for twenty-five. You put these in the bank for two weeks and let them clear. Now this is the clever bit. Then you send back the cheques for twenty-five pounds from the real company name, Arse Tickler's Faggot Fan Club, saying sorry, we couldn't get the supply from America, they have sold out. Now you see how many of the people cash those cheques; not a single soul, because who wants his bank manager to know he tickles arses when he is not paying in cheques!

Re:And they don't even have to sell anything

Ideas don;t come from only one place necessarily. That's a complete infofascist myth - it's completely possible for multiple people to independently have essentially the same idea. That's why it should be clear to someone willing to apply a moment's logical thought that patents are about control, not innovation.

a guess

Maybe they work?

Re:a guess

You HAVE to be kidding.

You could sell a canned vacuum this way. Enough people will bite at a product if it is marketed correctly.

Look at the "pet rocks" that sold in the 70's.

Re:a guess

"Look at the "pet rocks" that sold in the 70's."

I'd have to say you missed the point of the Pet Rock. The product was actually the (moderately) funny book that came with the rock.

Yours came with a book?

Crap.

Uh-oh

There's now going to be about 6,000 very embarrassed men if these logs remain accessible.

Re:Uh-oh

They were ordering for a friend

Re:Uh-oh

>>They were ordering for a friend

And being involved in your "friend's" erectile dysfunction is somehow LESS embarassing?

Hmmm...

MadCow

Re:Uh-oh

I don't know about that, the number seems to be down to only 404.

Always wondered...

... I had always wondered if anyone would actually buy from a spammer.

Any chance the spammer did a media honeypot? Released fake records to make marketers *think* he was successful?

Re:Always wondered...

Actually, they're called a honeytokens [slashdot.org]. Good point.

Computers are getting too easy to use

I always thought that people gullible/uneducated enough to fall for spam would also be too uneducated to run a computer well enough to handle the email in the first place.

Guess we've done too good a job of making them easy to use...

Public Disgrace!!

Ok, reading the article and following a couple links - here's the penis pill spammer!

Braden Bournival
561 Montgomery. St, Manchester, NH 03102
Tel. #: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

Do whatever you want with this info but don't blame ME!!!

And one from Canada

Tim Campbell
1235 George Ave.
Windsor, Ontario
Canada
N8Y 2X6
TEL#:[phone]

Re:Public Disgrace!!

Because they are actually delivering the pills, they aren't breaking the laws. It's legitimate advertising, kinda. I mean, you take the pill, see attractive member of the preferred sex, and your penis enlarges by many inches.

Because of weird legal loopholes, spammers can legitimately email you by way of lists they got from other companies that once got your email because you agreed to let them sell it when you clicked "OK" without reading the entirety of the 5 page privacy policy.

Re:Public Disgrace!!

"There have got to be some laws these guys are breaking. Why does not the police or government get these guys?"

RTFA. The FTC says there is no proof that these things work but it does not have the resources to follow up. I guess there are bigger fish to fry.

Btw, it also says that the guy has a strange sense of ethics and honoured all refund requests. He's also a national-level expert chess player.

Ooh

What kind of an idiot would buy penis-enlargement pills?
Meeeeeeeeeee :(

Re:who would buy?

"an idiot with a small penis "

Aren't you glad Slashdot lets you post anonymously? :)

The problem that just won't go away.

My Hotmail account has been filling up regularly with spam like this for years, and I always wondered not only who the hell would buy something like this from someone they didn't know but also why people who are dumping hundreds of thousands of messages an hour through a network aren't having their connections terminated. You know the drill; everybody's got an abuse policy, but apparently [e-mail] is routed to the Recycle Bin.

Despite my vehement loathing of spam, a recent incident is making me question how we go about dealing with it. Recently, Something Awful has been having issues with the SPEWS list, a popular spam blacklister, who according [somethingawful.com] to Something Awful [somethingawful.com] blacklisted a whole chunk of IP addresses that happened to include their own unabused server without offering recourse or explanation simply because it had the misfortune of sharing address space unknowingly and unwillingly. I'd call that overkill, and more offensive than the perceived problem of spam itself if truth be told. Bayesian filters [python.net] work, so why do we need to continue inadvertently censoring netizens who have nothing to do with spamming?

I tell you, folks, after reading this article and hearing about what anti-spam proponents have come up with for solutions, I'm starting to have second thoughts about the whole deal. For me it comes down to to the freedom of speech issue -- I've always been told that if you can't handle free speech you don't agree with you obviously can't handle free speech -- and I suppose just because something irritates me doesn't mean that the greater good would be served by silencing that something.

Another perspective is that the amount of money being pumped back into the economy by so-called unsolicited commercial e-mail is nothing to scoff at, and perhaps legislating it in some tolerable form such as limiting a company to one commercial message per person per day would create a new legitimate business method in this country. It's something to think about, certainly. I'd hate to think we're going to lose another revenue stream to outsourcing before we've even had a chance to give it a go locally, and this may be a way for us to recapture some of those IT jobs that have been lost and generate a whole new crop of successful entrepeneurships.

Re:The problem that just won't go away.

For me it comes down to to the freedom of speech issue -- I've always been told that if you can't handle free speech you don't agree with you obviously can't handle free speech -- and I suppose just because something irritates me doesn't mean that the greater good would be served by silencing that something.


Admittedly, I didn't RTFA.. But, as someone who is vehement about free speech myself I can tell you that I don't consider SPAM as free speech. It's not free speech if you have no way to avoid it. Sure, if I don't like what someone's saying on TV, I can change the channel. I don't have the option of 'changing the channel' on a spammer.

I agree, everyone should have the right to speak their mind, no matter how unpopular or controversial. However, no one has the right to force anyone else to read, listen to, or otherwise hold captive an audience - and thats exactly what spammers are doing.

And don't tell me I can simply hit the delete button - thats not something I should have to do. Just like if someone's making harassing phonecalls to me, I can call the police and press charges. There needs to be a similar mechanism for SPAM, preferrably something involving rope, stakes, honey and a mound of Texas fireants.

Logic is fleeting

In principle, I agree with you. But, on the one hand, you argue that

if I don't like what someone's saying on TV, I can change the channel

implying that speech on television is "free speech" (since you have a way to avoid it). However, when refering to email, you write

don't tell me I can simply hit the delete button - thats not something I should have to do.

Does this imply that you shouldn't have to pick up the remote control and change the channel -- that the television should just read your mind? After all, in both cases (watching television and reading email) you are choosing to do so, and you are choosing to focus on a single instance (channel or particular email). If you don't like that particular instance, you either (a) change instances by using the remote control or the next/delete button, or (b) change mediums by turning the television or the email application off.

What's the difference again? Like I said, I agree with you in principle, but your logical argument here on what constitutes "free speech" is weak.

Re:The problem that just won't go away.

First, the "money pumped back into the economy" statement. You think that the customers would have burnt that, or put it in their matress if they hadn't bought swedish-made penis pumps? I doubt it. They'd have bought the next product advertised on the shopping network, or sold at the checkout at Walmart.

Second, the "free speech" issue. If you lie to my employees to get them to stamp your mail with my bulk-mailing code it's not free speech, it's fraud. I won't shut you down because of what your mail says, but because you want me to foot the bill for it. Also, your right to free speech doesn't obligate me to listen. If you have to lie about the subject and sender to get people to listen, it's likely they don't want to hear you.

Re:The problem that just won't go away.

SA uses CogentCo to host their servers. CogentCo is a cesspool of spammers. Anyone that does business with CogentCo deserves to have all of their email blocked by every router on the internet. The fact that CogentCo allows spammers to operate freely on their network and does ZERO to stop them is reason enough to blacklist CogentCo. SPEW has blacklisted thousands of spammers hosted at CogentCo, some of them dozens of times using different IPs. CogentCo gives these spammers new IPs every time. The only way to combat this is to blacklist CogentCo's entire block.

"For me it comes down to to the freedom of speech issue -"
You can say whatever the fuck you want, but not in a manner in which I have to pay for it.

Re:The problem that just won't go away.

Sorry, Sheetrock, you're completely wrong with your solution to spam. It's not a freedom of speech issue any more than shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre is a freedom of speech issue. How about the freedom to not have to listen? If you were to restrict each spmmer to one spam per person per day, you'd still end up with an inbox full of spam. There are 6 billion people on this planet. If only a 1000 of them were spammers - that's still 1000 items of spam a day.

The Bayesian filter is only a stopgap as well. The spam still gets sent, clogging up mail servers and a whole load of bandwidth. The only long term solution is to stop spam at source, and I don't really have an answer how to do that.

There are a few suggestions:
1) Dump SMTP. Replace it with a secure version that doesn't allow spammers to hide behind an anonymous address.
2) Make spamming illegal, punishable by large fines, and *enforce it*
3) Authorities need to recognise spam as a seriousproblem and deal with it. If someone sent out a destructive virus, it would take the FBI about 2 days to track them down. The same approach needs to be taken with spam.
4) Make it an offence to *buy* from a spammer. Call it an accessory to a crime, or something.

Re:The problem that just won't go away.

Your right to free speech does not obligate me, as a private citizen, to provide you a forum in which to exercise that right.

Thus, a spammer's free speech rights have no bearing on my inbox.

Lesser of two evils

Suddenly, telemarketing doesn't seem so bad. At least my household never got phone calls from perverts offering pics of underaged teens, unlicensed pharmacy ads, etc. And to top it off, telemarketing is a manpower intensive operation whereas one guy can send out a billion e-mail letters on his own. At least telemarketing provides jobs.

Re:Lesser of two evils

At least telemarketing provides jobs.

Spam provides jobs too in that someone has to write the filter programs so that we are saved from having to manually delete one more fsking spam.

jobs?

At least telemarketing provides jobs.

So does pimping, but that doesn't mean I'm going to recognize it as an overall benefit to society.

Forget the pills

The penis enlargement lotions work much better. Send me your email and I will tell you how to take advantage of this great offer!

ON spam...

More and more I've been getting spam that advertises various unscrupulous things, usually the offer of pornographic pictures, but offers no links and has a bad return email address. There is literally no way to contact the the sender without email header hackery.

What is the point? They can't gain anything from this and leaves me completely baffled..

women customers?

Other customers included the head of a credit-repair firm, a chiropractor, a veterinarian, a landscaper and several people from the military. Numerous women also were evidently among Amazing Internet's customers

Talk about salesmanship!

Re:women customers?

Numerous women also were evidently among Amazing Internet's customers

That reminds me. A couple of years ago, I was wondering how easy it was to get prescription drugs on the Internet without seeing a doctor. I went to a web site that sold birth control pills.

To get the pills, I had to fill out a questionnaire with my medical history.

No, there was no possibility that I was pregnant.

No, I had no history of reproductive illness.

No, I am not a smoker.

Yes, I understand that the pill does not prevent the transmission of STDs.

And so forth.

I submitted my answers, and it proudly announced that I met their criteria and could go on the pill. They were all set to send them to me. I didn't go through with it, though, because of one little thing they didn't bother to ask about... I'm male.

Get your story straight Wired.

This goes against an older article on Wired [wired.com] that said that spammers aren't interested in actually selling anything at all other than e-mail addresses to each other.

You! Outta the Gene Pool!

Tiny dicks AND no brains? Hopefully a side effect of these pills is sterilization...

Garg

E-mail Addresses needed

Where can I get the E-mail addresses of those 6,000 people who ordered the pills? I'm a classmate of a roomate who's sister's boyfriend's father's 3rd cousin is a banker in Nigeria who's looking for someone to help him get 300 million dollars out of Nigeria for a cut.

spammers are dumb

If you read about most spammers (i.e. Ralsky, Hardigree, etc.) the one thing that sticks out about all of them is that they're generally not very intelligent. Their choice is to spam and live in the million dollar house, or go back to McDonald's and the trailer park. Obviously, they're not going back to the trailer park without a fight.

It's obvious that they're making money; how else is Ralsky going to afford his house?

Mathematics 101 with DLS!

Okay, sooo... 6000 orders in a 4 week period?

52 weeks in a standard year (big surprise there for some of you!) so 52 / 4 = 13, thus 13 * 6000 = 78000 sales in one year. For a rough estimate of world population right now I'll take 6.100.000.000 people, but that includes by average 52% women. Thus ( 6.100.000.000 / 100 ) * 48 = 2.928.000.000 and 2.928.000.000 / 78000 ~= 37538 years before every male on this planet has a huge penis and the spam will FINALLY stop!

I suggest lynching spammers, much faster.

Re:Humanity at a loss

I'd always hoped that people stupid enough to order spam-advertised items would be too stupid to operate a computer, nevermind use email software.

Apparently, there is a small but significant range in which you're smart enough to use a computer, but too dumb to know what to do with it.

Indeed

Apparently, there is a small but significant range in which you're smart enough to use a computer, but too dumb to know what to do with it.

It used to be called AOL, but I think the segment is expanding...

Kjella

fucking naive

The president of a California firm that sells airplane parts and is active in the local Rotary Club gave out his American Express card number...

you really believe these people purchased this shit? these people's credit cards were stolen! ever get emails that resemble ebay's account page or aol's billing or some other fake bullshit thats trying to snatch your credit card numbers.. those things fool a lot more people than "make your penis huge" sells penis pills

what do you think gets done with all those stolen cc's.. the bastard turns around and signs them up for penis pills, porno sitesm, etc whatever gets the comission. sending out a buttload of spam to the same people that your stealing ccs from just obfuscates things to help cover your tracks. this is the real shady shit thats going on with spam.. not penis mail that people are actually buying, people are getting ripped off!

I bought the pills

I alone am responsible for all 6000 orders. Soon, very soon, my penis will be the size of North America, and the world will quake in fear.

Re:I bought the pills

That's the biggest laugh I've had in weeks, man. God bless you and your continental penis.

let's break this down

Other customers included the head of a credit-repair firm :
heh...a scammer getting scammed...
a chiropractor :
well, maybe he wanted to straighten out more than his patients' backs...
a veterinarian :
maybe he felt insecure after working around horses?
a landscaper :
Well, according to Hustler, these guys get loads of poontang from horny housewives and their nubile 18 year old daughters, so maybe he just needed it to keep up w/ business.
and several people from the military :
Private Johnson, don't ask, don't tell.
Numerous women also :
I guess penis pumps just aren't cutting it anymore...

Child endangerment

I wonder how long it will be until a parent sues a spammer purely within the framework of existing laws. IANAL, but I can't imagine it's legal to walk down the street and try to sell pornography to minors, for example. How can it be any different for spam?

Perhaps all you'd need to do is prove that the primary user of an email address was a minor, and wham, bham, thank you for the million bucks.

At the least it might stop people just randomly hitting yahoo.com or hotmail.com email addresses. On the other hand, if you give your email address to a porn site in the first place, some people might argue that you deserve what you get, quite frankly.

Proposed Solution

Sell pills to people (via spam) that actually causes sterility instead of the virility the label promises. Once we take these mouth-breathers out of the gene pool spammers will have to call it quits.

SPAMNAZI

I created a website a month or so ago to address this issue. I believe this will be the ONLY solution to getting rid of spam.

http://www.spamnazi.org [spamnazi.org]

How many of the 6000 responses bogus?

So, the log has 6000 responses, with credit card info. I wonder how many of those 6000 are real, and how many are bogus or stolen credit card numbers from pissed-off spamees?

Free alternative to pills

Wanna grow your schlong? Do what I do: View pornography! Millions of satisfied customers report a dramatic increase in length, girth and firmness in just minutes, using this ancient time-tested technique.

Disclaimer: Results may not last more than 5-10 minutes.

What I don't understand...

...is why I get so much spam which is gibberish. I'm not talking about Portugese (about 1/2 my spam originates from Brazil), I mean actual nonsense, often without links, images, or attachments.

What does someone hope to gain from this? Is it some secret code that will give me a giant viagra-enhanced penis and hot schoolgirls to go with it if I can figure it out? At least for normal spam I can see the motivation.

example: I got mail today with the title "rmw oejectivity" and the body "cwdb". Why?!

-puk

Re:What I don't understand...

Some of those are simple "pings" - if the message is not bounced then the address is valid and ripe for more spamming. This is a less sophisticated version of the image bug technique. That's why it's important to have a way to fake bouncing spam from your domain, although nowadays more ISPs are blocking that kind of thing.

I read an article once (in Salon or Wired, I forget) about how some spammers simply feed on each other and rely on the fact that the message is sent, but not necessarily read or even (stupidly, as in this case) used to buy something. Some spams contain links to crap that doesn't even exist, and I don't mean the opt-out or anything - the website or telephone number or address are bogus, so even if you wanted to you can't actually buy anything from them.

Weird.

Are they real orders?

There are a number of scripts (going by such names as "Formfucker") foating around to generate random (and totally bogus) orders by filling in spammers' forms.

Can't help but wonder if this is the case here.

Real Life Slashdotting

Someone already posted this guys address, so hopefully he will be receiving several tons of mail a day now. But the information I would REALLY like to get my hands on is the 6000 people on that list. I would like to conduct interviews with them to figure out the exact reasons (aside from small dicks) they bought, and why the typical spammer tricks didn't set off warning sirens.

Once I have this information, I would like to give it to Spamhaus or some other organization, preferably one with an advertising budget, and have them do a spot on tv explaining the dangers of spam.

Maybe the government should do a public service announcement about it. You see, the majority of people who buy this crap are not internet savvy, but you better believe they are television savvy.

I think the FTC would be much better off spending its money to educate potential victims of spam than it would going after the actual spammers.

Is it April again already?

For once, it's actually worth R'ing the FA:

Bournival refused repeated requests for interviews about his business. When approached for comment at a chess tournament in Merrimack, New Hampshire, last month, Bournival, who is a national-master-caliber player, ran away from a Wired News reporter.

An investigation (registration to Salon.com required) last month revealed that Bournival's mentor and business partner is Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a chess expert and former neo-Nazi leader who turned to the spam business in 1999 after it became public that his father was Jewish.

You can't make this stuff up.

mitch

Understanding the economics of direct marketing

You can begin to get an idea of the terrible challenge that spam presents us if you consider the economics of direct mail marketing - that is, sending advertisements in printed letters via snail mail.

I used to work for a small software company [working.com] where most of our sales were made through direct mail. I think our gross sales peaked at about $2 million one year while I was working there in the mid-90's.

Each direct mail piece sent to a prospect costs hard cash to send, for printing, postage, labor and mailing list rental. Yet it was our experience that a response rate of 0.5% was sufficient to yield a profit.

Once you have identified a profitable offer and a mailing list that's rich with customers who respond to direct mail, you have a license to print money. That's why you probably each of you reading this receive two or three pieces of direct mail every day.

The following two comments I posted at Kuro5hin discuss this in great detail:

• The Importance of Advertising to Business [kuro5hin.org]
• Direct mail is very scientifically targeted [kuro5hin.org]

Now, if you consider that the cost of sending spam is insignificant when the spammer can hijack an open relay, you will understand that spam will never stop until purchasers stop responding to spam.

Simply installing filters on your own machine won't help. The people who purchase sexual enhancement products over the Internet don't know from spam filters.

I think the end to spam will come only when every ISP and mail hosting service installs filters that are enabled by default. Only then will the response rate of spam be reduced to the point that it's no longer economical to send it.

I think it's likely the day will come when ISPs will be forced to install filters that cannot be disabled. Possibly this will be ordered by various national governments.

The New War on Drugs

Did the writeup on this story remind anyone else of the expensive, ongoing, and utterly ineffective war on drugs?

The war on drugs in the US deals with the problem almost entirely as a 'supply' issue. Decades of failure should convince anyone that you can't solve what is essentially a 'demand' issue by stifling 'supply'. It seems that spam is no different ...

The question is, do you go with a 'just-say-no' campaign to educate email consumers about spam, or do you accept spam as a (legitimate) fact of life, and work on (government and self) regulations to make it manageable?

The Freedom of Speech Issue

Some here have brought up the freedom of speech issue in defense of spam.

Freedom of speech is not absolute, and the "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater" example is only one of the most simplistic restrictions.

Let's take a quick look at prohibitions of Freedom of Speech that have been upheld by the courts.

Noise Ordinances: Yes, the Nazis must be allowed to march through Skokie, but not down a residential street at 2 a.m. on a school night. Courts have consistently upheld that protected speech can be limited to specific places at specific times so as not to constitute an undue burden of noise or disruption on the public.

Property Rights: Your right to be heard does not include a right to come on my property, against my wishes, to speak to me. A good example is when ACT UP! invaded a church during services and started shouting "you're killing us" as part of a protest against the Catholic Church's policies. Had they kept it on the sidewalk in front of the church, it would have remained a legal, protected protest. When they entered the church, they became criminals and were arrested for trespass.

Unsolicited Advertising: Opt-out is very supported by the courts. After one telephone call or junk postal mail, if I provide you with proper notification, you may not make another unsolicited call or send me another unsolicited advertisement by post. If you do, I may sue you. The law gets even more restrictive regarding unsolicited advertising by fax, requiring opt-in.

Violence: Incitement to riot is not protected. Advocating the violent overthrow of the government is not protected. Using speech intended to goad someone into a physical altercation is not protected. To take the shouting "fire" in a movie theater example a step further... shouting "what are ya, some kinda faggot" in a crowded redneck bar is not protected speech.

Fraud: Speech intended to defraud me out of services, property, or money is not protected.

Slander & Libel: Slanderous or libelous speech is not protected.

Protection of Children: It is illegal to sell pornography to children. Though it is protected speech, its distribution can be restricted to a certain age group.

Commercial Speech: You can be forced to warn people your product is dangerous, tell people how much fat or sodium it contains, etc. Commercial speech is MUCH more restricted and burdened with rules and regulations than political, religious, or artistic speech.

Broadcast Censorship: Ever seen hardcore porn during prime time on the networks? Of course not. The Supreme Court ruled that since radio/television waves enter your home unbidden, they can be regulated much more restrictively than print media.

CONCLUSION

This isn't a comprehensive list of the legal restrictions on free speech. It's just some of the major ones. There are little ones (remember that DeCSS was found not to be protected speech), and even coersions (*legally* withholding funds or licenses from groups that exercise their first amendment rights in a manner the government does not like).

So don't argue that spam is an exercise of free speech. Spam is commercial, it violates the property rights of its recipients, and is subject at bare minimum to the same restrictions set on phone and postal solicitations.

Of course my favorite quote on free speech is from Hubert Humphrey: "The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously." - Greg

In Soviet Russia...

I had once stumbled upon an interview with the guy in charge of Demetrius Software, a russian spamming company. He genuinely believed he was doing the right thing, and, indeed, helping his clients achieve their business goals.

He illustrated the effectiveness of spamming thusly. My services cost $500 (can't remember the actual figure, but it was something to that effect), he said, for sending messages out to a list of 4 million addresses. However, I had more than once been approached by people starting small businesses and not having even $100 in their budget for advertising, asking to, like, send their spam to 400,000 people for $70. I never refused, he said, and guess what - all of them were repeat customers coming back in a short while and ordering full-scale mailings for the full price.

This would only mean, he reasoned, that spamming boosted their business well enough.

What kind of idiot would Swallow Spammer's Pills?

"What kind of an idiot would buy penis-enlargement pills?"

I say, what kind of idiot would swallow a Spammers penis-enlargement pills?

While I appeciate the humor in this article (especially the Penis Man outfit) I have to wonder, did the author actually buy the pills, and take them?

I mean we all have guesses at the ethics some of these spammers possess. It wouldn't suprise any of us for a spammer to just take the money and run. Is it that far a stretch to imagine some psychopath spammer sending out poison as penis enlargment pills? (Also, I think some of the traditional aphrodisiacs are in fact mild poisons.) (I'm getting distracted.)

It's gotten so bad that I sometimes think about sending out spam myself, but as a parody, something to the effect of "Fuck you! Give me Money!" and an explanation that this is what spammers are really saying. I would never actually do this because as Faith said when she took over Buffy's body "It would be Wrong."

I was thinking of these things while reading the comments and got another idea. What if there was spam sent out warning people that spammers selling penis enlargment pills are actually selling poison. Or better than poison, but a poison that renders you completely impotent for life? (For the irony.)

And then I thought that it wouldn't even be neccessary to send it via spam. You could just write up an urband legend "Forward this to Everyone you know! Won't Someone please think of the Children!" type of email a la Good Times warning people of the danger of Spammers Penis Enlargment Pills. Just put a fake quote in there about the FDA or other government organization (OHS?) and the clueless idiots would do the rest.

The Urband Legends websites could write an explanation that it was a hoax meant to point out the fact that you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet and you should never trust a spammer and anyone who buys from a spammer should have the shit beat out of them (or at least people think about it, even normally non-violent people).

Hopefully it wouldn't quote me because then people would be out to beat the shit out of me. That's the problem with these hoaxes, once they get started they get completely out of control.

So in conclusion, this post is just something that is nice to think about. You should not actually do it because it would be wrong. Not to mention that I don't want to get the shit beat out of me repeatedly for starting yet another forward this to everyone you know email hoax.

Trashing GNC?

Look how many GNC stores there are these days. They sell nothing but sugar pills and snake oil.

What makes you think that? GNC sells several useful health products that have very real effects. I buy my multivitamins there, as well as protein powder. Unless the legally-required nutrition label on the side is lying to me, each serving contains 30 grams of protein, just like the container advertises. How is that "sugar pills" or "snake oil?" I buy the powder to get the protein, the container claims to contain protein, the powder actually is protein. I get exactly what I pay for and expect.

I call bullsh*t on you.

But they make billions selling Stacker 2 to fatties too lazy to excersize and too weak willed to stem their eating.

I've heard this comment all the time, too, and I used to think it was true. But as time went on, and I heard the comment more and more, and I met more people taking supplements, creatine, and protein bars/mixes/shakes, I noticed something: they did work out. They weren't just taking the pills and sitting on their asses. Come to think of it, I've never met anyone taking those supplements who wasn't also on some kind of exercise program.

So I call bullsh*t on you again.

Twice in one post. Nice work.

Re:Trashing GNC?

As a GNC member & frequent customer, I can attest to the fact that many of the products work on placebo effect, if at all they do.
The side-effects are severe, sometimes fatal.
The advertizing is quite deceptive, bordering on scam.

Here are some examples -

1. GNC MRPs & Protein powders : Body can utilize only so much protein. If you buy a powder with 100 grams protein per serving, you'll simply tax your kidneys and piss it off - no anabolic ( muscle-building ) effect. Anything above 30-40 grams is overkill.

2. Aspartame in MRPs : Almost ALL meal replacement powders sold in GNC have aspartame. Check aspartamekills.com for known risks. Lately, a few ( eg. MET-RX ) have switched to suclarose and prominently advertize "No aspartame", but doesn't that make then liable since they have sold aspartame-laced powders for so many years before making the switch.

3. Protein cannot be effectively utilized without carbs, however, the protein powders sold in GNC contain 2-4% carbs, quite inadequate.

4. GNC also sells soy-protein. On the protein utilization scale, soy has the lowest value. ie. just 30-40% of soy can be utilized by body, the rest is excreted. Besides, soy protein intake leads to man-boobs.

5. GNC sells ephedra in various brands ( stacker, xenadrine, metabolift etc ). Ephedra is banned in over 20 states in US and has caused over 100 deaths ( check New England Journal of Medicine transcripts ) & thousands of cardiac impairments.

6. GNC sells glutamine. Now, the body can only utilize glutamine manufactured by its BCAA. It cannot use glutamine consumed orally, so it is pointless to even take glutamine in this form. If you really want glutamine, take BCAA capsules. Of course, GNC won't tell you that.

7. WTF is NO2 ? Huge ads in GNC for NO2, totally unproven product.

8. All these calcium supplements - coral calcium, oral calcium whatnots - quite ineffective. Calcium does not bind to the bones when taken in this fashion. Milk builds bones, because the calcium in milk is bound to the carbs and digested as such, and gets to the bones. You can't just pop a pill of calcium & hope it'll get to your bones - it'll simple be excreted.

9. Male sexual aids in GNC - yohimbe & other herbs, are quite unproven in their efficacy. Check any sex-med mag.

10. GNC is in the health business, just as tobacco companies are in the nicotine-delivery business. The set aim of GNC franchisee is to sell healthfoods so they make money. Just walk into a GNC and act dumb, and ask them what you should buy to get fit fast. You'd be amazed - they'll give you tons of useless junk that simply don't work & if it does, contributes marginally to making you fit. You have to workout intensely, and they won't tell you that.

Know your facts before you step into a GNC. At least talk to a nutritionist. There is some really good stuff in GNC, but the vast majority is just sham products with fantastic marketing.