Re: ::scr What porn sites don't want you to know..

[Simon Batistoni <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/10/02 05:22 -0700, jonah wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Oct 2002, Simon Batistoni wrote:
> 
> > On 11/10/02 12:10 +0100, Simon Wistow wrote:
> > > On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 09:31:57PM -1100, bill_0671n38@xxxxxxxxxxx said:
> > > >    YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO RECEIVE A FREE MEMBERSHIP !
> > > >    NO STRINGS ATTACHED ! That's right...
> > > >    Access these sites now before you need to pay.. CLICK HERE
> > > >    or visit http://www.freetrialz.info/~allfree/?email=scr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > 
> > > Yay! Pr0n Spam
> > > 
> > > Grr, too ill to turn this into a thread.
> > 
> > Ah what the hell...
> > 
> > Apparently, as much as 1/3 of mail being sent today is spam. One in
> > three damn messages. So, I have a couple of random questions:
> > 
> > 1) Are other people noticing an increase in spam? 
> 
> Judging from other people's complaints, I must get hardly any email spam
> at all. I get about one or two spam mails a day, usually for remortgagaes
> or other loans, easily few enough for me to deal with without resorting to
> something like spamassasin. I mean, obviously I would if I felt I needed
> to, but I just don't.
> 
> I'm not sure why this is; I'm careful about where I put my email address,
> but then so are other who suffer from spam, and the address is also
> plastered all over various public mailing list archives. I do have an old
> lineone email addy I use for situations which could result in spam, eg
> registering freeware etc. However, that is the only address on which I
> receive spam, and like I say, only one or two a day.
> 
> I hope that doesn't sound too smug.

Well, it does. I've always been very careful with my mail addresses,
although I do deal with a lot of people in a lot of different forums,
so there's always the chance that it's leaked to the wrong place 2 or
3 hops away from me.

Your smugness is alleviated by the fact that somehow, you managed to
kick over the spamassassin threshold (my original mail didn't), and
get killfiled :)

Ah, it was a combination of your particular "from" header, and the
fact that you mention penis enlargement in addition to the other stock
spams I'd already quoted...

> It's worrying, though, looking at those figures. Due to its persistence
> and prevalence, I'd always imagined spamming to be even more profictable
> than that, which suggests that either they have a higher hit rate or they
> have *really* massive lists of addresses[0].

Prevalance could indicate more or less the opposite. If they get, say,
50 hits for every 50,000 mails, but that is a sustainable rate, then
they're going to be sending out as many batches of 50,000 as they
possibly can. And this effect may multiply, the lower the
hit-to-mail-sent ratio is. I always kind of assumed that this was the
way it worked, tbh.

> I wonder how long it takes them to realise that spam on less than bulk
> scales just is not effective? Does anyone ever respond to these misguided
> companies to point out how annoying the spam is?

I have done on quite a few occasions. Responses vary from heartfelt
apologies to "wuh? It's a customer service". <sigh>