spam

Computer spammers are still around, for one big reason: There’s a recession on and these guys are making lots of money DESPITE THE FACT that they only get one response for every 12 MILLION emails they send out!

Researchers discovered this by setting up a fake pharmacy and sending out their own spam. BBC News quotes researcher Stefan Savage as saying, “The best way to measure spam is to be a spammer?.[but] after 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted.”

Does this mean spam is no longer working? On the contrary, spammers are sending out so many messages that a return of was less than 0.00001% is GOOD?just not as good as it used to be in old days before computer firewalls.
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Remember the "money-making" e-mail scams from Nigeria? (Maybe you’re still getting them). A group of spam-busterswho call themselves 419eater.com areusing their skills to track these scammers down and have fun at the same time (419 stands of a section of Nigeria’s legalcode).

Dan Damon writes in bbcnews.com that millions of people geta version of this letter everyday: "Dear Sir/ Madam, I amfine today and how are you? I hope this letter will find youin the best of health. I am Prince Joe Eboh, the Chairman ofthe ‘Contract Award Committee,’ of the ‘Niger DeltaDevelopment Commission (NDDC),’ a subsidiary of the NigerianNational Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
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American Online is running a sweepstakes in which the prize is a 2002 Porsche Boxter seized from “a guy who by our estimates made more than a million dollars from spamming,” according to AOL executive Randall Boe.

Anick Jesdanun writes that AOL got the car as part of their settlement in a lawsuit against the spammer. Boe says, “We’ll take cars, houses, boats, whatever we can find and get a hold of.”

The sweepstakes can only be entered online and is open until April 8. In order to enter, you must have been an AOL subscriber before the sweepstakes opened Tuesday.
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If you’re like the rest of us, you hate spam, but if you’re not careful, you’re probably sending a lot of it to your friends. At least one third of all spam is being sent from home computers without their owners’ knowledge. Your address book can be cracked and your computer power harnessed by one the many computer viruses going around.

Mark Ward writes in bbcnews.com that hackers create viruses that search out computers with insufficient firewalls and virus detectors and add them to a huge pool of PCs that send out reams of spam every day. Spammers want to use your computer by remote control because of the new anti-spam laws that make it impossible to send out spam any other way.
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