{"id":613,"date":"2006-12-06T00:17:55","date_gmt":"2006-12-06T07:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=613"},"modified":"2006-12-06T00:17:55","modified_gmt":"2006-12-06T07:17:55","slug":"death_taxes_and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=613","title":{"rendered":"Death, taxes and spam"},"content":{"rendered":"

I turned off the trackback feature of this blog a long time ago. It’s not that I don’t like trackbacks. It’s just that the spam became too much – hundreds and hundreds a day. And, let me tell you, trackback spam is the worst. It seems to be produced in hell by a gang of very efficient and very warped demons.<\/p>\n

I also had to start forcing people to register before commenting. I know it stinks but, again, I can’t deal with the spam (even with a filter). I turned off the comment registration requirement a few days ago just to see what would happen. I had 50 spam comments in ten minutes. I noticed, too, that their quality is up in general – quality in spam being measured by the degree of deviousness. The new thing seems to be to start with a couple of sentences about something in the news in order to slide by the filter. It works pretty well, too. Congratulations, guys.<\/p>\n

And email spam? I’ve been under the impression that it’s been getting a lot worse recently. Hundreds get caught by my spam filter every day, and a few dozen more get through. Stock tips, mainly. Relentlessly annoying. Apparently my impression is right. A new study<\/a> says that nine out of every ten email messages today are spam. When I first saw that figure, I said to myself, in a loud voice, “No way!” Then I thought about it a little more, and I shouted back at myself, “Way!”<\/p>\n

Nine out of ten.<\/p>\n

That’s a lot of spam.<\/p>\n

The New York Times reports<\/a> that spammers have successfully defeated the four main strategies used by filters: evaluating where a message is coming from (useless with botnets that take over innocent people’s PCs), checking the text for tell-tale keywords (text has been replaced with images of text), scanning for multiple copies of the same message (spammers use software to automatically alter a couple of pixels in every message), and checking embedded links (you don’t need a link if you’re just trying to get someone to buy a stupid penny stock).<\/p>\n

So how many suckers are actually going to buy some obscure penny stock based on a ridiculous spam tip? The answer: enough. The Times gives the lowdown:<\/p>\n

\n

Spammers buy the inexpensive stock of an obscure company and send out messages hyping it. They sell their shares when the gullible masses respond and snap up the stock … Though the scam sounds obvious, a joint study by researchers at Purdue University and Oxford University this summer found that spam stock cons work. Enough recipients buy the stock that spammers can make a 5 percent to 6 percent return in two days, the study concluded.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s all about zero costs and unlimited scale. Given enough eyeballs, no scam is too shallow. If you want a lesson in the new economics of abundance, there’s no better place to look than at the business of spam. It’s all there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I turned off the trackback feature of this blog a long time ago. It’s not that I don’t like trackbacks. It’s just that the spam became too much – hundreds and hundreds a day. And, let me tell you, trackback spam is the worst. It seems to be produced in hell by a gang of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}