Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 12:56:57PM +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote: > This is just wonderful! > An article in this line has appeared in NYTimes (reg req) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/weekinreview/25john.html?hp -- Dan Kenigsberghttp://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~dankenICQ 162180901 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
DI>> no ones buy merchandise which was promoted with spam mail. at DI>> least most of us don't. No one works with Windows. At least most of us don't. ;) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] \/ There shall be counsels taken Stanislav Malyshev /\ Stronger than Morgul-spells phone +972-66-524945/\ JRRT LotR. whois:!SM8333 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
you are ignoring the most important thing: no ones buy merchandise which was promoted with spam mail. at least most of us don't. Unless the need hits, a friend using windze deleted by hand his spam. One day he ran out of ink for his printer, that day he didn't delete the spam on printer ink and saved himself 65% of the cost of buying it here in Israel. So I guess for some spammers it is worth it, just a major pain however for the rest of us.. Aaron = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
On Friday 23 January 2004 14:11, Tzahi Fadida wrote: > Well, > what you are describing sounds great. if a business will get 0.5 - 1 % of > the clients he sent SPAM than he will be very happy. > The small precentage doesn't mean small money. No one sells gum by > email ads, more likely computers, vacations, dating services, etc.. > 5000 customers * min(100nis) = 5 nis a month. > So it should be clear why they continue to SPAM. you are ignoring the most important thing: no ones buy merchandise which was promoted with spam mail. at least most of us don't. -- diego, Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
Well, what you are describing sounds great. if a business will get 0.5 - 1 % of the clients he sent SPAM than he will be very happy. The small precentage doesn't mean small money. No one sells gum by email ads, more likely computers, vacations, dating services, etc.. 5000 customers * min(100nis) = 5 nis a month. So it should be clear why they continue to SPAM. anyhow, i find that the best technique to avoid getting sent SPAM is: 1) bounce SPAM by using mailwasher and similar software. this should increase the anoiance level of the SPAM providers that uses filtered SMTPs, and thus have the return address written. It could also close their account by the ISP who get this bounces. 2) don't use hotmail, yahoo etc... mail services since they are high profile. if for example, when i used lycos.co.uk i almost got no spam at all. 3) adding a line warnning SPAMMERS, for manual additions. see below. regards, tzahi. WARNING TO SPAMMERS: see at http://members.lycos.co.uk/my2nis/spamwarning.html > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Shachar Shemesh > Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 1:53 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: Linux-IL mailing list > Subject: Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks > > > Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: > > >Shachar Shemesh wrote: > > > > > > > >>Then again, maybe not. For example - I'm confounded if I can understand > >>why spammers will vigorously spam people who ask to be removed. > >>Presumably, if someone asks to be removed, he is highly unlikely to ever > >>buy something from you. Spamming him again will only cost you the > >>(insignificant, but still) money, with almost no hope of seeing any > >>back. I'm not sure what this means about the above logic. > >> > >> > > > >If you ignorethem, your email address is "unconfirmed". If you reply to > >remove yourself from the list, you are confirming your email address > >exists and gets to a real person, which makes it much more valuable. > > > >Geoff. > > > > > How is that more valuable? The precise calculation should be something > like this: > a - The chances that an unconfirmed email reaches a real person. > b - The chances that a random real person will actually buy stuff. > c - The chances that someone who asked to be removed will buy stuff. > > In general, for it to be profitable to not honor removal requests, c > must be greater than a*b. I suggest that this is not the case. > a is somewhere in the 80%. > b is somewhere in the 0.5% (according to my rather dim recollection of > spam news. I'm not really sure about this one). > Are you truely suggesting that someone who sent an email saying "don't > ever ever spam me again" is more than 0.4% likely to buy something > advertised in a future email (meaning - buying a product for every 250 > spams received)? > >Shachar > P.S. > If anyone has better numbers, please let us know. > > -- > Shachar Shemesh > Lingnu Open Systems Consulting > http://www.lingnu.com/ > > > > = > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
NH>> of 10,000,000 copies for $1000" and pays them. The spam provider NH>> guarantees nothing beyond this - they do not guarantee any ROI. Actually, from what I have read in Wired, some spamvertizers work for sales percentage, and they make a good buck on it, from what they say. NH>> Often, I believe, the spamvertiser will find that he is getting NH>> mounds of hate mail, legal threats, and very little, if any, NH>> ROI, but he has already paid his $1000. Having seen the >From the same Wired article, it turns out not to be exactly the case. I.e., it might be, but there are examples of spamvertized businesses being profitable. Surprisingly, there are a lot of people out there wishing to elongate their reproductive organs with pills at $50 a bottle. Provided these pills cost the producer about $5 a bottle and the spammer gets $10 per order - looks good for them both. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] \/ There shall be counsels taken Stanislav Malyshev /\ Stronger than Morgul-spells phone +972-66-524945/\ JRRT LotR. whois:!SM8333 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
SPAM work :( I know few web sites builder who promote themselves using SPAM. They send a mail with a nice website interface and an image of a girl smile + a nice sentence "You can start doing money today !! order a website - call us for a meeting". The sad thing is that this method works :( I see how we, the honest companies that don't send spam loosing customers to them. they said to me: "what do I care, I send the messages and people start to ask for appointments from us. so we get some angry messages, so what ?" -- Canaan Surfing Ltd. Internet Service Providers Ben-Nes Michael - Manager Tel: 972-4-6991122 Fax: 972-4-6990098 http://www.canaan.net.il -- - Original Message - From: "Nadav Har'El" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Shachar Shemesh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Linux-IL mailing list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 2:23 PM Subject: Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks > On Wed, Jan 21, 2004, Shachar Shemesh wrote about "[OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks": > > Here goes - spam is so common because the return on investment for > > sending spam is so huge. You spend nickels sending millions of messages, > > I think that the situation is many times different from what you describe. > I think the spamming subculture has two strata (to similify things): call > them "spam providers" and "spamvertizers". > > A spamvertiser has some business, scam or political idea that he wants to > advertise, but no technical knowhow in sending out spam (amassing ISP > accounts, building open relay lists, addresses, mail software, anti-filtering, > etc.). So he contacts a "spam provider", a company that sells him "delivery > of 10,000,000 copies for $1000" and pays them. The spam provider guarantees > nothing beyond this - they do not guarantee any ROI. Often, I believe, the > spamvertiser will find that he is getting mounds of hate mail, legal threats, > and very little, if any, ROI, but he has already paid his $1000. Having seen > the reprecautions, this spamvertiser may repent and not hire spam providers > again - but there is a new sucker - and spamvertiser - born every minute. > Sometimes the spamvertiser succeeeds (e.g., just ONE sucker falls for the > 409 scam and sends $2000 to the spamvertiser), and continues to hire this > spam provider. > > > and get several bucks in return from the 0.5% of actual buys. Recent > > trends, however, are eroding this ROI away. Either because better > > filters cause the number of people who buy to decrease, or because > > striger control over open relays increase the costs of sending. We all > > know that by now, of course. > > I believe that as much of 90% of the spam I get is unintelligable: either > written in bizarre foreign language, as HTML-only, as pictures (that I do > not watch), filled with obfuscating characters and words, and so on. Sometimes > I even get spams without any sensible message at all. It doesn't seem to be > bothering the spam providers, who are still making their buck. And frankly, > it also doesn't bother my spam filter which still has a 99.5% suceess rate > in recognizing spam. In fact, some of these obfuscation techniques just make > the spams easier to spot (and harder to confuse for real message). > > > This is good because of another aspect of things. This suggests that > > there are people who are running spam filters, and even baysian spam > > filters, who actually buy stuff advertised in spam. In other words - > > baysian spam filters are now common enough for ordinary "clueless" > > people to use. Presumably, spammers only started doing these changes > > because they saw their return dimminish. > > Another reason is possible: spam providers have to fight each other over > their clients, the spamvertisers. Boasting more features like "filter > avoidance" can improve their chances of getting clients. There might be no > real need for those filter avoidance techniques. Just like peacocks evolved > their long tails, without a "real" reason. > > > Then again, maybe not. For example - I'm confounded if I can understand > > why spammers will vigorously spam people who ask to be removed. > > Presumably, if someone asks to be removed, he is highly unlikely to ever > > buy something from you. Spamming him again will only cost you the > > (insignificant, but still) money, with almost no hope of seeing any > > back. I'm not sure what this means about the above logic. > > Again, I can think of several reasons - one is my above provider/spamvertiser > model. The provide
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004, Shachar Shemesh wrote about "[OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks": > Here goes - spam is so common because the return on investment for > sending spam is so huge. You spend nickels sending millions of messages, I think that the situation is many times different from what you describe. I think the spamming subculture has two strata (to similify things): call them "spam providers" and "spamvertizers". A spamvertiser has some business, scam or political idea that he wants to advertise, but no technical knowhow in sending out spam (amassing ISP accounts, building open relay lists, addresses, mail software, anti-filtering, etc.). So he contacts a "spam provider", a company that sells him "delivery of 10,000,000 copies for $1000" and pays them. The spam provider guarantees nothing beyond this - they do not guarantee any ROI. Often, I believe, the spamvertiser will find that he is getting mounds of hate mail, legal threats, and very little, if any, ROI, but he has already paid his $1000. Having seen the reprecautions, this spamvertiser may repent and not hire spam providers again - but there is a new sucker - and spamvertiser - born every minute. Sometimes the spamvertiser succeeeds (e.g., just ONE sucker falls for the 409 scam and sends $2000 to the spamvertiser), and continues to hire this spam provider. > and get several bucks in return from the 0.5% of actual buys. Recent > trends, however, are eroding this ROI away. Either because better > filters cause the number of people who buy to decrease, or because > striger control over open relays increase the costs of sending. We all > know that by now, of course. I believe that as much of 90% of the spam I get is unintelligable: either written in bizarre foreign language, as HTML-only, as pictures (that I do not watch), filled with obfuscating characters and words, and so on. Sometimes I even get spams without any sensible message at all. It doesn't seem to be bothering the spam providers, who are still making their buck. And frankly, it also doesn't bother my spam filter which still has a 99.5% suceess rate in recognizing spam. In fact, some of these obfuscation techniques just make the spams easier to spot (and harder to confuse for real message). > This is good because of another aspect of things. This suggests that > there are people who are running spam filters, and even baysian spam > filters, who actually buy stuff advertised in spam. In other words - > baysian spam filters are now common enough for ordinary "clueless" > people to use. Presumably, spammers only started doing these changes > because they saw their return dimminish. Another reason is possible: spam providers have to fight each other over their clients, the spamvertisers. Boasting more features like "filter avoidance" can improve their chances of getting clients. There might be no real need for those filter avoidance techniques. Just like peacocks evolved their long tails, without a "real" reason. > Then again, maybe not. For example - I'm confounded if I can understand > why spammers will vigorously spam people who ask to be removed. > Presumably, if someone asks to be removed, he is highly unlikely to ever > buy something from you. Spamming him again will only cost you the > (insignificant, but still) money, with almost no hope of seeing any > back. I'm not sure what this means about the above logic. Again, I can think of several reasons - one is my above provider/spamvertiser model. The provider gets paid by spam sent out, not by success ratio, so he doesn't care about the success of the spam. In fact, if the provider has a list of 10,000,000 addresses and suddenly half of them want out, he can now only boast 5,000,000 addresses and get half the money - a big lose for the provider. A related reason is the cost ratio. Writing software to handle "remove"s and the related computers costs money, which is hard to steal (like spammers do with most other resources they use). Sending out a few more copies of the spam costs very little, if at all. Another reason is the evidence trail. Having a real address for sending removal requests means that it is easier to trace the spam provider, which is naturally something they do not want. > For example, it may just mean that spammers want to spam. They don't > care whether people actually buy stuff. They spam like we write software. If this was the case, you'd see more "I Love ..." or "... was here!" type of spams. No, I think spam providers are actually making money. But my hunch is that most of this income comes from spamvertisers which invent the idiotic sales pitches we get in our inbox, not from the actual recipients of that email. -- Nadav Har'El|Wednesday, Jan
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
On Wed, 21 Jan 2004, Shachar Shemesh wrote: > > > >>Then again, maybe not. For example - I'm confounded if I can understand > >>why spammers will vigorously spam people who ask to be removed. > >>Presumably, if someone asks to be removed, he is highly unlikely to ever > >>buy something from you. Spamming him again will only cost you the > >>(insignificant, but still) money, with almost no hope of seeing any > >>back. I'm not sure what this means about the above logic. > > > >If you ignorethem, your email address is "unconfirmed". If you reply to > >remove yourself from the list, you are confirming your email address > >exists and gets to a real person, which makes it much more valuable. > > > How is that more valuable? The precise calculation should be something > like this: > a - The chances that an unconfirmed email reaches a real person. > b - The chances that a random real person will actually buy stuff. > c - The chances that someone who asked to be removed will buy stuff. > > In general, for it to be profitable to not honor removal requests, c > must be greater than a*b. I suggest that this is not the case. > a is somewhere in the 80%. > b is somewhere in the 0.5% (according to my rather dim recollection of > spam news. I'm not really sure about this one). > Are you truely suggesting that someone who sent an email saying "don't > ever ever spam me again" is more than 0.4% likely to buy something > advertised in a future email (meaning - buying a product for every 250 > spams received)? > P.S. > If anyone has better numbers, please let us know. The major reason spammers try to avoid filters and spam people who asked to be removed is twofold: 1. Many ISPs filter spam, so if you avoid an ISP's filters you might stand a chance to be the one of the two spams a specific person would get, which makes the probability of spam being read and goods bought much higher. 2. The ones who collect the addresses are not the ones who spam, and the collectors have an interest to sell as many addresses as possible and call them "confirmed" or even "opt in". Regarding your numbers, the percentage of bad addresses in e-mail lists sold is significantly less than 80%. It's more in the 10% range, if you remove duplicates and incorrect addresses. Studies have shown that high percentages of the e-mail addresses sold are syntactically incorrect (i.e. bad TLD) or include "NOSPAM" etc. BTW: Why post on linux-il and not on [EMAIL PROTECTED] ? Alon -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://alon.wox.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627 DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- Scenery is here, wish you were beautiful. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
On Wed, 21 Jan 2004, Shachar Shemesh wrote: > How is that more valuable? The precise calculation should be something > like this: > a - The chances that an unconfirmed email reaches a real person. > b - The chances that a random real person will actually buy stuff. > c - The chances that someone who asked to be removed will buy stuff. > > In general, for it to be profitable to not honor removal requests, c > must be greater than a*b. I suggest that this is not the case. > a is somewhere in the 80%. > b is somewhere in the 0.5% (according to my rather dim recollection of > spam news. I'm not really sure about this one). > Are you truely suggesting that someone who sent an email saying "don't > ever ever spam me again" is more than 0.4% likely to buy something > advertised in a future email (meaning - buying a product for every 250 > spams received)? If I was to buy a product for every 250 spams received, I would probably buy 250 products a year! behdad >Shachar > P.S. > If anyone has better numbers, please let us know. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: Shachar Shemesh wrote: Then again, maybe not. For example - I'm confounded if I can understand why spammers will vigorously spam people who ask to be removed. Presumably, if someone asks to be removed, he is highly unlikely to ever buy something from you. Spamming him again will only cost you the (insignificant, but still) money, with almost no hope of seeing any back. I'm not sure what this means about the above logic. If you ignorethem, your email address is "unconfirmed". If you reply to remove yourself from the list, you are confirming your email address exists and gets to a real person, which makes it much more valuable. Geoff. How is that more valuable? The precise calculation should be something like this: a - The chances that an unconfirmed email reaches a real person. b - The chances that a random real person will actually buy stuff. c - The chances that someone who asked to be removed will buy stuff. In general, for it to be profitable to not honor removal requests, c must be greater than a*b. I suggest that this is not the case. a is somewhere in the 80%. b is somewhere in the 0.5% (according to my rather dim recollection of spam news. I'm not really sure about this one). Are you truely suggesting that someone who sent an email saying "don't ever ever spam me again" is more than 0.4% likely to buy something advertised in a future email (meaning - buying a product for every 250 spams received)? Shachar P.S. If anyone has better numbers, please let us know. -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Systems Consulting http://www.lingnu.com/ = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
Shachar Shemesh wrote: > Then again, maybe not. For example - I'm confounded if I can understand > why spammers will vigorously spam people who ask to be removed. > Presumably, if someone asks to be removed, he is highly unlikely to ever > buy something from you. Spamming him again will only cost you the > (insignificant, but still) money, with almost no hope of seeing any > back. I'm not sure what this means about the above logic. If you ignorethem, your email address is "unconfirmed". If you reply to remove yourself from the list, you are confirming your email address exists and gets to a real person, which makes it much more valuable. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 972-54-608-069 Icq/AIM Uin: 2661079 MSN IM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Not for email) = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[OT]nesws regarding vigros chicks
This is just wonderful! A (spam) mail with the above subject line arrived at my inbox. It appears that spammers have no more choice but to totally screw their own message, in order to get around the baysian filters. I'm not sure what the actual message is trying to sell. Something about the good qualities of a vigra for my seual health. Ok, so you may be wondering why I'm so happy. The reason is the return on investment aspect of things. Here goes - spam is so common because the return on investment for sending spam is so huge. You spend nickels sending millions of messages, and get several bucks in return from the 0.5% of actual buys. Recent trends, however, are eroding this ROI away. Either because better filters cause the number of people who buy to decrease, or because striger control over open relays increase the costs of sending. We all know that by now, of course. This is a new one, however. This means that in order to pass the baysian filters, spammers are begining to make their own messages incoherent. I can't imagine how that can help their actual buy percentage. This is good because of another aspect of things. This suggests that there are people who are running spam filters, and even baysian spam filters, who actually buy stuff advertised in spam. In other words - baysian spam filters are now common enough for ordinary "clueless" people to use. Presumably, spammers only started doing these changes because they saw their return dimminish. Then again, maybe not. For example - I'm confounded if I can understand why spammers will vigorously spam people who ask to be removed. Presumably, if someone asks to be removed, he is highly unlikely to ever buy something from you. Spamming him again will only cost you the (insignificant, but still) money, with almost no hope of seeing any back. I'm not sure what this means about the above logic. For example, it may just mean that spammers want to spam. They don't care whether people actually buy stuff. They spam like we write software. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Systems Consulting http://www.lingnu.com/ = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
