On Feb 26, 2009, at 6:59 AM, John Levine wrote:
Nor should they. Anyone who actually researches this stuff knows
that
the vast majority of "unsub" links simply confirm you as a live
target
who will click on random links sent to them through e-mail.
That's the conventional wisdom, not confirmed by research. The FTC
tried it in 2002 and found that opt-out made the spam load drop
slightly, and I don't see any reason to think it would be different
today.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2002/04/51517
R's,
John
The number of messages in their test is not that large, and it also
sounds like a large majority of those were mailto: links. It's
unsurprising they didn't go any where. These days they're pretty much
all http: links going to botnet webhosts.
Also, from the same article:
"Nonetheless, the risks of responding to spammers are far from
illusory, said Jeff Richards, vice president of the consulting firm
ePrivacy Group.
...
when he sent removal requests to spammers of the more obvious con
artist variety, in particular for messages emanating from exotic
locales in Eastern Europe and Asia, Richards said he frequently wound
up receiving more e-mail."
From my own experience with a Hotmail account a few years earlier
(late '90s), I tried to unsubscribe from every single e-mail I got and
went from a few dozen spams a week to several hundred very quickly.
This also pre-dates organized crime becoming heavily involved, and pre-
dates the obsession with browser exploits. Back then a lot of spam
was sent by semi-legitimate marketers from the US. These days all the
bad guys are out to get you to click on a single link.
--
bk
