There has been so much written recently (it seems) on the issues around Online Advertising, but it seems the great industry success story of 2006 is being overlooked - Autospam!
I first noticed this with a massive rise in trackback spam for this blog over the last 2-3 months, and started fishing around on the 'Net this weekend to see what is going on, found the very interesting website
Spamhaus.
Trackback spam seems to be mainly about raising the profile of websites, usually using Botnets (networks of slaved computers sending spam) to generate false links. My trackbacks are mainly selling viagra, insurance and various other extensions to recreational procreation. No double glazing, change your Telco or new kitchen spam yet, that still come via the 'phone unfortunately.
Seems like there has been a c 50% increase in Spam over the last few months, 120% over the last year, much of the increase down to Russian Botnets. Increasingly spam is embedding pictures in the email, making it harder to catch with text based filters.
Much of the new spam is touting penny stocks, and
this site shows how it works. The site also points to recent papers by Oxford & Purdue University researchers
here and Dresden and Manneim researchers
here. which show why it works. A large amount of spam plugging the stocks x a small % of suckers = lots of money in, pushes up stock, spamsters sell, punters hold the dud stock.
A bit like the media / investment bank game really, but that of course is Respectable. ( I see Mary Meeker and Frank Quatrone are nearly fully rehabilitated)
Now I've been mulling this over this weekend, and I still can't get it through my head how anyone bright enough to use a computer can fall for this stuff, but I guess that there truly is one born every minute. And given enough spam, you will find that one. Every minute.
The lesson for advertising is clear....stop thinking in traditional, high transaction cost terms. Think low production cost, low distribution costs, low takeup rate. The future is in classifieds. (OK, Google got there already but this shows that they are not making all the money and there are ways around them). The trick will be to make them voluntarily opt in, so they evade the Spamcatchers.
By the way, Spamhaus, a British charity, got taken to court in Illinois and was ordered - in Illinois - to pay $11.7m damages to a spammer who seems to have perjured himself completely - see this quote:
A lawsuit filed in an Illinois court by David Linhardt (aka e360 Insight LLC) against The Spamhaus Project Ltd., a British-based non-profit organization over which the Illinois court had no jurisdiction, went predictably to default judgement when Spamhaus did not accept U.S. jurisdiction.
To get the 'SLAPP' lawsuit case accepted in Illinois, David Linhardt fabricated, under oath, that Spamhaus "operates a business in Illinois". Although being aware that Spamhaus was UK-based and that the British organization had filed an Answer to the court stating there was no jurisdiction, Illinois District Court Judge Charles Kocoras accepted Linhardt's false claim and ruled the UK organization to be in Illinois jurisdiction. Spamhaus in fact operates no business in the United States, has no U.S. office, agents or employees in Illinois or any other U.S. state.
The default judgement awards Linhardt, a one-man bulk email marketing outfit based in Chicago, compensatory damages totaling US$11.7 million, orders Spamhaus to permanently remove Linhardt's spam evidence records, orders Spamhaus to lie to the public by posting a notice stating that Linhardt is "not a spammer" and orders Spamhaus to cease blocking spam sent by Linhardt's company e360 Insight LLC to Spamhaus' users.
Spamhaus firmly stands by its position that Linhardt is a spammer (i.e: "a sender of unsolicited bulk email"), Spamhaus has large samples of spam advertising Linhardt's website www.bargaindepot.net, sent to Spamtraps and non-existent users, including spam sent to some of Spamhaus own investigators, plus many complaints from Internet users ready to testify they never opted-in to any such list and were being spammed by Linhardt. (see samples of e360 spam below)
Spamhaus additionally has samples of spams advertising Linhardt's www.bargaindepot.net sent, in violation of the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, with false routing information, from compromised computers on ADSL lines in Vietnam, China, Korea, Taiwan and Norway.
And I thought the US patent system was in a bad way.......even Flickr
patently doesn't hold a candle to this! This is positively Pythonesque, (as of course is spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam, luvverly spam)
What worries me is that the (usually well funded) Forces of Net Evil are continually being allowed to get away with antisocial media acts by the guardians of the law. This one beggars belief, but the attack on the freedoms of the 'Net is insidious, from draconian DRM to intrusive analytics.
Postscript...this meme is clearly in the ether, I saw this blog by
Paul Kedrosky this afternoon.
