If you think spam is about selling the products being advertised, in most cases you’d be wrong. The real spam business is very different.
I’m in Crikey today with a Crikey Clarifier: What is spam and where does it come from? Amongst other things, I point out:
An estimated 94% of all email is spam: over 100 billion messages every day. Some of that is advertising by businesses who don’t realise it’s wrong or, imagining a sudden surge of business, don’t care.
But over 80% of spam is sent by fewer than 200 people using networks of “borrowed” computers called botnets. These zombie computers have been infected with a virus or Trojan horse that hands control of the computer to the bad guys.
It’s free for all to read.
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[Is utterly incapable of discussing spam without mentioning Vikings or the phrase "But I don't like spam!"]
[hangs head in shame and shuffles out of thread]
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@Sabian: The story you link to hardly surprises me. Even after six years of the Spam Act, so many PR and marketing people are completely unaware of the rules.
Earlier this week I had to slap down a client whose Internet presence is hosted through my server for the usual sin: a bulk email to everyone they’d ever been in touch with ever, with no way to unsubscribe.
There’s something rather satisfying about writing an email whose subject line begins “FIRST AND FINAL WARNING”…
Sweet Sister Morphine: Don’t forget your hat and coat on your way out.
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At first, I was mildly concerned about the time I spent writing that letter, but i figured it’s good to have on file, and will only need to be altered occassionally to suit future (and there will be future) circumstances.
Most interesting of all, my email didn’t get picked up at all, but the blogh entry picked up an unusual amount of traffic in the days before receiving a reply from the president of that association.
Blog-power. Is nice. Especially for fisting.
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