On 08:48 AM 4/30/01, Tom Neff wrote:
>--On Monday, April 30, 2001 8:37 AM -0700 Chuq Von Rospach
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On 4/30/01 8:24 AM, "Tom Neff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> From an ISP standpoint, what really matters about spam is the number of
>>> recipients. The really noticeable difference between a legitimate
>>> mailing list and a spam campaign is that the latter is HUGE.
>>
>> That's not a safe assumption, Tom. There are huge, legitimate mailing
>> lists as well.
>
>But wait, what does "huge" mean? How big are you thinking? The biggest
>listserv I know of is TESL-L which has about 12,000 members. If half of
>those were on AOL (unlikely given the specialized educational topic, but
>possible for a similar sized list) then there'd be 6,000 deliveries
>attempted to AOL. 6,000 is POCKET CHANGE for a spammer. A typical
>campaign tries to hit ten times that many or more.
I get opt-in promotional email from CD-Now. I suspect they have a LOT more
than 12,000 members (subscribers). I get email from Amazon. Wanna bet
they email to more than a million, every mailing?
How many are AOL users? Answer: a huge percentage, perhaps 15% or more.
I might be able to get real data for you, one of my housemates works for a
company that sends out emails like this (legitimate opt-in marketing
email). I'll ask.
jc
