Record Broken: 82% of U.S. Email is Spam
Outdoing most analysts’ worst predictions, spam accounted for 82 percent of all U.S. email last month.
After a two-month drop in spam, the number of unsolicited bulk email skyrocketed in April, bringing the saturation number up to record levels here in the U.S. and across the world, according to MessageLabs, Inc., a security company based in New York. […]
Of that 82%, I think at least 75% of it landed in my email box. This shit is obnoxious.
For the record, I do not want a bigger penis, larger breasts, a new home mortgage, a copy of Windows XP for $49, or a vacation in Orlando. I will not give anyone my bank account number so they can transfer $28,000,000 from Nigeria, watch Michelle have wild sex with barnyard animals on her secret dorm-room Webcam, or invest in a fertilizer company’s stok at 16 cents a share. I do not have a timeshare for sale, I do not need any Vicodin, and I am not looking for a new partner at Matchup.com.
Last time I checked, “eifsTuFy7mUuWbDz” was not a word, and if you’re going to try to sell something to me with such enticing offers as “Friend, twisting from my embrace compressor up and doing!” you may want to rethink your approach.
Call me whacky, I do not see how giving six anonymous strangers $5 each today is going to get me $17,000 tomorrow. My employer is perfectly happy even though I have no college degree; I am, you see, the owner of the business. I do not want to “Submit to the Natural-Born Bitch, the Princess of Fetish,” but thanks for asking! I do not want to “spatterdrop rap” my “ema1l campa1gn.” I doubt an email entitled “acrylic mango open” is going to help me “cl1mb the ladder to s.u.c.c.e.s.s.”
I do not care what Paris Hilton’s boyfriend used, which herbs are more efficient than via-gra, or what the Survivor cast did when the cameras were off. I was not born yesterday, and I am not going to give you my credit card number, my eBay password, or my ATM PIN number, even if you insist that I will lose my banking privileges, my Internet access, or my firstborn son if I don’t, mkay?
I do not speak Russian, Japanese, Chinese, or Korean, so assume that I’m a lost sale if your message is not even English.
I do not need to spy on all my friends–I have, you see, chosen friends I can trust. I do not want a copy of your Banned CD filled with Amazing Hacker Secrets–I was a hacker before you were even born. I do not need your low-carb diet, your South Beach diet, your herbal diet supplements, your amazing Sudanese dieting secrets, your amazing Chinese dieting secrets, or your amazing body-wrap secrets–I’m skinny enough already, thanks.
I do not want in on the ground floor of your real-estate scheme, your online marketing scheme, or your PayPal pyramid scheme. I do not want high-quality Rolex watches at unbelievably low prices.
I do not need to “fermat haystack enthusiastic sixtieth grasp constraint calamitous garish schroedinger lesotho excess chaplin doubt” my “exact digit aptitude electro cinch bawdy gin hebephrenic pancake fulton myrrh firearm galloway beer blasphemy passenger defecate phantom choir girlish murky anorthosite”–there’s far too much fermat haystacking going on of exact digital aptitudes in this country as it is! (That’s what’s wrong with this world today–too many people don’t respect exact digit aptitudes as God made them.)
So enough already!
Just popped up in my spambox
This just in….
brainstem crops cautions chartering discharged
Just popped up in my spambox
This just in….
brainstem crops cautions chartering discharged
Me Too!!
Succintly put. My question is, who is the SPAM working on? If no one wants it (at least, no one I know wants it), then what kind of profit does it give them to keep sending it?!?
Re: Me Too!!
Are you kidding? I’m all about 3nL4r61n6 mie m4nH00d, and I’ll have the last laugh after getting rich helping out my new Nigerian friends. nqs140
Seriously though, the cost to send out a thousand (or a few thousand!) e-mail messages is trivial compared to other shotgun advertising methods (direct mail, for example). As a result, even if only one in a thousand people respond then the spam was most likely successful, and there are a LOT of people on the net who don’t know any better!
While I’m filling up Tacit’s journal, let me caution everyone out there about the potential hazard of viewing any spam that’s in HTML format. By including links to images in the message, when you view it your mail client sends a request to the spammer’s server for the image. These links can easily be customized for each recipient such that by opening the message you notify the spammer that your e-mail addy is valid and in use, thus making you a target for more spam down the line.
I personally don’t use a spam blocker (I’d rather put in the extra effort and ensure that I make the final decision about what messages get through), but my mail client (mail.app) does flag probable spam messages, and more importantly it doesn’t load embedded images unless I explicitly tell it to do so.
It’s my belief that spam is and should remain a constitutionally protected form of free speech. It’s also my belief, however, that using a crowbar to give “feedback” to spammers (and open revolt against an oppressive government, for that matter) are also legitimate free speech. 😉
Re: Me Too!!
I forgot about the customizy thing for images in my reply (below). I have Yahoo set to not automagically display HTML images in email. It’s the only email account that gets spam for me, anyway. My other accounts (like the one I use for LJ) are at canoe.ca, which I don’t think you can alter the settings for HTML emails from “you just clicked this message but we’re going to display this warning instead of the body and are you SURE you want to view this and if you do then click here to open it in a new window.” Which is A Good Thing. Actually makes viewing the few newsletter things I get much better (paddling.net’s newsletter is HTML and fairly graphicy, and looks much better outside of frame-looking things).
What were we talking about? Oh, spam’s bad. And I like the story of people getting a hold of a Head Spammer’s (of the snail mail variety) address and putting him on all sorts of mailing lists. He was understandably upset. But he didn’t get the message. *sigh*
Re: Me Too!!
Advertising revenue. X% (where X is a small number) of people who receive spam open it. Y% of the people who open it have their browser/email program set to automatically view images (where Y is likely pretty high). In an HTML message, the image can be on the company’s server, so they know, based on how many hits that image gets, how many people opened the email. And how many clicked on it. They can use these numbers to attract advertisers to their website.
But, since it’s always a percentage of the people who receive the spam, no matter how small X is, the more messages get sent, the more people open and click.
Sometimes, statistics sucks all sortsa monkey balls, but it can at least explain the behavior of assholes. And telemarketers, and door-to-door salespeople (the individuals in each job who actually contact the public not necessarily being assholes, since they could just be working through a temp agency or part-time to help pay for college, and thus get their souls crushed).
Re: Me Too!!
It must be working on someone…
Simple economics, really. If it costs $50 to send a million emails, you can make a profit even if your rate of response is only 0.001%.
Me, I think we need to find that one person in ten thousand who responds to spam, and beat him senseless!
Me Too!!
Succintly put. My question is, who is the SPAM working on? If no one wants it (at least, no one I know wants it), then what kind of profit does it give them to keep sending it?!?
What about a Prayer Wheel For Our Troops or a nifty picture of an angel made entirely out of the letter X. Really. You need that. It’s the missing 7%. What’s yer email address, I’ll send it to you.
Umm…you’re absolutely right, that’s precisely what I need! My email address is currently tied up in a bank in Nigeria, and I have no way to get it out. But if you give me your bank account number, I can transfer it into your bank account, see, and…
What about a Prayer Wheel For Our Troops or a nifty picture of an angel made entirely out of the letter X. Really. You need that. It’s the missing 7%. What’s yer email address, I’ll send it to you.
Re: Me Too!!
Are you kidding? I’m all about 3nL4r61n6 mie m4nH00d, and I’ll have the last laugh after getting rich helping out my new Nigerian friends. nqs140
Seriously though, the cost to send out a thousand (or a few thousand!) e-mail messages is trivial compared to other shotgun advertising methods (direct mail, for example). As a result, even if only one in a thousand people respond then the spam was most likely successful, and there are a LOT of people on the net who don’t know any better!
While I’m filling up Tacit’s journal, let me caution everyone out there about the potential hazard of viewing any spam that’s in HTML format. By including links to images in the message, when you view it your mail client sends a request to the spammer’s server for the image. These links can easily be customized for each recipient such that by opening the message you notify the spammer that your e-mail addy is valid and in use, thus making you a target for more spam down the line.
I personally don’t use a spam blocker (I’d rather put in the extra effort and ensure that I make the final decision about what messages get through), but my mail client (mail.app) does flag probable spam messages, and more importantly it doesn’t load embedded images unless I explicitly tell it to do so.
It’s my belief that spam is and should remain a constitutionally protected form of free speech. It’s also my belief, however, that using a crowbar to give “feedback” to spammers (and open revolt against an oppressive government, for that matter) are also legitimate free speech. 😉
Re: Me Too!!
Advertising revenue. X% (where X is a small number) of people who receive spam open it. Y% of the people who open it have their browser/email program set to automatically view images (where Y is likely pretty high). In an HTML message, the image can be on the company’s server, so they know, based on how many hits that image gets, how many people opened the email. And how many clicked on it. They can use these numbers to attract advertisers to their website.
But, since it’s always a percentage of the people who receive the spam, no matter how small X is, the more messages get sent, the more people open and click.
Sometimes, statistics sucks all sortsa monkey balls, but it can at least explain the behavior of assholes. And telemarketers, and door-to-door salespeople (the individuals in each job who actually contact the public not necessarily being assholes, since they could just be working through a temp agency or part-time to help pay for college, and thus get their souls crushed).
Re: Me Too!!
I forgot about the customizy thing for images in my reply (below). I have Yahoo set to not automagically display HTML images in email. It’s the only email account that gets spam for me, anyway. My other accounts (like the one I use for LJ) are at canoe.ca, which I don’t think you can alter the settings for HTML emails from “you just clicked this message but we’re going to display this warning instead of the body and are you SURE you want to view this and if you do then click here to open it in a new window.” Which is A Good Thing. Actually makes viewing the few newsletter things I get much better (paddling.net’s newsletter is HTML and fairly graphicy, and looks much better outside of frame-looking things).
What were we talking about? Oh, spam’s bad. And I like the story of people getting a hold of a Head Spammer’s (of the snail mail variety) address and putting him on all sorts of mailing lists. He was understandably upset. But he didn’t get the message. *sigh*
Personally, I’m tempted to commit the ultimate irony and copy this entire journal entry into an email and forward it to everyone I know with an admonishment that if they delete it before they do the same, horrible things will happen to them within a week.
This is truly classic, and I love it love it love it.
Although, you did forget the mass of emails stating that “if u get an email that sez ‘I Am Important – Open Me!’ dont open it or u will get a virus!” Those are my personal favorites.
You’re absolutely right, I forgot all about those. Many are the days I’ve been sorely tempted to track down all the people who send me those virus warnings, each and every one, and club ’em all like baby seals.
Personally, I’m tempted to commit the ultimate irony and copy this entire journal entry into an email and forward it to everyone I know with an admonishment that if they delete it before they do the same, horrible things will happen to them within a week.
This is truly classic, and I love it love it love it.
Although, you did forget the mass of emails stating that “if u get an email that sez ‘I Am Important – Open Me!’ dont open it or u will get a virus!” Those are my personal favorites.
Re: Me Too!!
It must be working on someone…
Simple economics, really. If it costs $50 to send a million emails, you can make a profit even if your rate of response is only 0.001%.
Me, I think we need to find that one person in ten thousand who responds to spam, and beat him senseless!
Umm…you’re absolutely right, that’s precisely what I need! My email address is currently tied up in a bank in Nigeria, and I have no way to get it out. But if you give me your bank account number, I can transfer it into your bank account, see, and…
You’re absolutely right, I forgot all about those. Many are the days I’ve been sorely tempted to track down all the people who send me those virus warnings, each and every one, and club ’em all like baby seals.