What do you think it costs to spam people?

kranky

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
21,019
156
106
I was reading an article about the incredible growth of spam. One statistic cited said that AOL blocked 1 billion spam emails in January, and by June it was 4 billion.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think it costs to send a spam message to 1 million email addresses? (assuming you hire a spamming business to do it)

Answer below.
 

jfall

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 2000
5,975
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0
$0 if you do it right. It's not exactly rocket science. This is one of the main problems, it is too easy for people to do. There is way too much of it :( .. I hate spam!!!!!!
 

Thegonagle

Diamond Member
Jun 8, 2000
9,773
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I actually know someone who works for a major porn site. It's incredibly profitable. They route the spam through servers located outside of the USA, and they don't spend very much doing it. I don't know any numbers though.
 

Evadman

Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Feb 18, 2001
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I could do it from home once befire my ISP killed me :p
 

AbsolutDealage

Platinum Member
Dec 20, 2002
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I was watching some news report that was interviewing a spammer and he said that if they get something like a 0.001% interest, they can turn a profit. It's virtually free to send out email, it is only limited by the length of your lists.
 

kranky

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
21,019
156
106
$0 is not valid - first post said "assuming you hire a spamming business to do it".
 

filmmaker

Golden Member
Oct 20, 2002
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Originally posted by: kranky
$0 is not valid - first post said "assuming you hire a spamming business to do it".
Even if you hire a spamming business to do it, it could still be free. Instead of paying them for their services, the spamming business so get a cut of the "clicking" fee for the spam.
 

MangoTBG

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2003
3,101
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Originally posted by: filmmaker
Originally posted by: kranky
$0 is not valid - first post said "assuming you hire a spamming business to do it".
Even if you hire a spamming business to do it, it could still be free. Instead of paying them for their services, the spamming business so get a cut of the "clicking" fee for the spam.

Reread what you just said....



[rant]IT'S NOT FREE IF THEY ARE GETTING A "CUT"! [/rant]

You are still losing money. End of story.

 

TMPadmin

Golden Member
Jul 23, 2001
1,886
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A friend of mine replied to spam telling them to get a job. The guy responded saying he makes $80K per year and works maybe two days a week. Could be BS but it sure is profitable!
 

Nitemare

Lifer
Feb 8, 2001
35,461
4
81
Originally posted by: TMPadmin
A friend of mine replied to spam telling them to get a job. The guy responded saying he makes $80K per year and works maybe two days a week. Could be BS but it sure is profitable!

I bet he got his name sold to 20 other spammers for replying.

I normally just look at the header and notify their ISP
 

kranky

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
21,019
156
106
Answer:

Sending one million spam emails through a spamming operation would cost about $3. As AbsolutDealage pointed out, only a tiny response rate is needed to make it profitable. Now you know why there's no end in sight to this abomination.
 

Nocturnal

Lifer
Jan 8, 2002
18,927
0
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It cost NOTHING. All they need is the program to spam with, and e-mails. You can easily harvest e-mails by using spamming programs that are made for just that.
 

tk149

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2002
7,253
1
0
Originally posted by: xchangx
Here's a good paper explaining sobig.a and how it helps spammers

http://lurhq.com/sobig.html
Thanks for the link. OMG! I hope the A-holes who wrote the sobig series DIE DIE DIE.

From sobig.e
Anytime Internet Explorer is open to a page containing the text "e-gold Account Access", "Account Access", "Bank", "My eBay", "Online Service", "bank", "E*TRADE Financial" or "PayPal - Log In", a keystroke logger is activated to steal usernames and passwords. These are later delivered along with all the user's browser cookies to a cgi script at a URL in the .ini file