From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Wed Oct 02 2002 - 03:52:31 MDT
On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Damien Broderick wrote:
> I'm guessing that it's the latter more than the former. Where spam
You're wrong. Spam typically pays for itself, and sometimes pays
handsomely.
> differs from biological viral or memetic or computer viral infection
> is that it *doesn't* autoreplicate via its hosts. Someone--lots of
It does. You're using other resources on the network to occupy your
message. You're paying to have the spam delivered to you, and you pay for
the hardware to make it reach your eyeballs, and you have to invest into
immune systems to block spam.
It is very much like a virus. You could, of course, create a true
worm/virus the message is the medium spam that sends on itself to the
addressbook via the usual Microsoft Outlook vulnerabilities, but this
hasn't been done yet.
> someones--has to pay to send this crap out in an endlessly renewed
> flood. I was hoping for some more precise sense of how much it *does*
> cost a spammeister to blast the world with **GROW YOUR DICK REALLY
The low end software is cheap. I don't know how effective it is, but you,
too, can spam the world starting at $99, or so.
> ENORMOUS AND MAKE BIG $$$$ AT HOME!!!** Each day presumably someone is
> going to the computer and checking the in-box for BIG $$$$ from dupes,
> paying for the machine the @list is on, for the connectivity, etc.
> Maybe it's so laughably cheap that 1000 people or fewer around the
> world think, `Hey, why the hell not give this spamming caper a go?
> Well, now that's done for the day I can go out back and bite the head
> off another chicken.'
No, that be geeks.
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