Spam me 40 times and I'll come back for more
For the last nearly year I've received about 40 spams per day at work. My employer had some antispam software but gave up on it when legitimate email was getting blocked. I was lucky before this I guess, but now I'm just doomed.
For example, I got this content just now, along with a link I shall not reprint here.
********
Hi
CIAxxLIS
VIAxxGRA
AMBxxIEN
VALxxIUM
********
I suppose the xx are meant to confuse simple software looking for exact matches on blockable content.
When I got back from a week vacation, I cleaned out 240 spam messages in about 12 minutes, or about 3 seconds per email. Obviously it is only an average and it got progressively slower as the fraction remaining became less and less spam.
Let's say an average spammer sends out ONLY 100,000 email addresses per effort, and sends 10 per days. HIS (and I'm SURE it is a HE) productivity is 1 million emails per day, which (if everyone is as unlucky as me not to have automation) eats up 3 million seconds of other people's time to delete them, or 34 days. If I'm paid $30/hour, including deleting emails, I can delete 1200 emails/hour, or about $0.025/email. So 1 million emails COSTS $25,000. So one person can cost the world $25,000/day in productivity wasted.
You gotta wonder about this "occupation". We don't know how much he actually gets for his labors. I imagine very little. In fact it seems like a rather hellfull job, even if there are moments of creative inspiration perhaps.
Well, I suppose were I a terrorist, trying to take down capitalism, I might START with taking out email. If four buttheads can cost $100,000/day, maybe an army of 100,000 could cost $10 billion per day!
Well, of course there's diminishing returns when the flow exceeds human capacity to respond t0. If I get 40, I can deal with it, but 400? Once a year after vacation maybe. And 4000?
It is curious why my email address hasn't been "sold" to even more spammers, but perhaps they all guard their little lists, knowing, we'll change email addresses if we get too much, so they have to stay managably annoying.
Maybe the "lists" get sold when people "move up", so each buyer just takes over the previous work load? Maybe "lists" are "certified" as active, and that work is what makes lists valuable. Who knows their business. I'm sure they're righting their books now, maybe make a movie version!
For example, I got this content just now, along with a link I shall not reprint here.
********
Hi
CIAxxLIS
VIAxxGRA
AMBxxIEN
VALxxIUM
********
I suppose the xx are meant to confuse simple software looking for exact matches on blockable content.
When I got back from a week vacation, I cleaned out 240 spam messages in about 12 minutes, or about 3 seconds per email. Obviously it is only an average and it got progressively slower as the fraction remaining became less and less spam.
Let's say an average spammer sends out ONLY 100,000 email addresses per effort, and sends 10 per days. HIS (and I'm SURE it is a HE) productivity is 1 million emails per day, which (if everyone is as unlucky as me not to have automation) eats up 3 million seconds of other people's time to delete them, or 34 days. If I'm paid $30/hour, including deleting emails, I can delete 1200 emails/hour, or about $0.025/email. So 1 million emails COSTS $25,000. So one person can cost the world $25,000/day in productivity wasted.
You gotta wonder about this "occupation". We don't know how much he actually gets for his labors. I imagine very little. In fact it seems like a rather hellfull job, even if there are moments of creative inspiration perhaps.
Well, I suppose were I a terrorist, trying to take down capitalism, I might START with taking out email. If four buttheads can cost $100,000/day, maybe an army of 100,000 could cost $10 billion per day!
Well, of course there's diminishing returns when the flow exceeds human capacity to respond t0. If I get 40, I can deal with it, but 400? Once a year after vacation maybe. And 4000?
It is curious why my email address hasn't been "sold" to even more spammers, but perhaps they all guard their little lists, knowing, we'll change email addresses if we get too much, so they have to stay managably annoying.
Maybe the "lists" get sold when people "move up", so each buyer just takes over the previous work load? Maybe "lists" are "certified" as active, and that work is what makes lists valuable. Who knows their business. I'm sure they're righting their books now, maybe make a movie version!
posted by Ares Olympus at 1:56 AM
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