Resolved What's in it for spammers?

Hi,

The E-mail program I use is Outlook Express, and I've no wish to change.

For the past couple of months I've been getting a daily batch of spam E-mails, despite paying my service-provider for a spam-filter. I imagine these messages must be being generated by a robot, programmed in such a way as to evade normal spam-filtering by avoiding the use of key words and combinations of words which such filters rely upon to work.

These are just harmlessly obscene and appear to serve no practical purpose whatsoever. They're little more than a minor irritation, frankly:- I just routinely delete them each time I open OE. Still, I'd rather not be getting them. I've read that even if I change my address it's possible for the spammers to follow me - and anyway the inconvenience attendant upon changing it seems out of proportion to the nuisance actually being caused.

Surely it must cost somebody something to devise, set-up and use the necessary software to generate these messages? What I would dearly like to know is:- why do they (the spammers) bother - what do they get out of it? It's not as if they were even trying to sell me anything (and I'm not talking about begging-letters or ones that tell me I've just won a million euros in a lottery I never entered-for, and will I kindly just forward my bank's details...).

I simply don't understand the mentality behind this. Can anyone explain?

 

Some contain links that if clicked, will turn your computer into yet another spamming 'bot, or infect it and then demand money to remove the infection, or use it to store illegal files, etc., etc., etc.

 

It should be pointed out that simply opening (or even previewing) the spam can be enough to validate the address (images Tony), though thankfully todays email clients offer features to prevent this.

 

Thanks for the helpful replies.

I guess that what they boil down to is that my best course is to carry on doing what I'm doing already - ie mechanically deleting them.

What are the chances that they'll eventually stop of their own accord? Or is the process so automated that once started it's effectively not under human control from then on?

 

Extremely small, occasionally spam bots get closed down but within hours another rears it's ugly head. Either way once on 1 spam list you'll likely be on several within minutes.

Best bet is to try and avoid it in the first place, I have several addresses, one of which is a honey trap. Whenever I subscribe to a mailing list or website/forum etc I use the honeytrap. If after a few weeks there is no increase in spam I'll change the address to one of the more secure ones.

If the honeytrap becomes overloaded with spam it's easy enough to abandon it and create another.

 

Best thing to do if you know it is spam, is to NOT open it and just delete it.

 

Think of it kinda like the junk mail you get via your postal service (snail-mail). You can't really stop it, so, ignore it and chunk it in the trash.