(off list)
--On Friday, November 16, 2007 6:16 PM -0500 Hector Santos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Spammers get more credit than they deserve. The majority are small organization snake-oil sales people dealing in a very small margin/high volume business model. They don't wish to waste expense on any R&D SMTP cracking team. They use free ware, brain-dead bulk mailers, scripts engines, some of which are ironically written by career IETF participants. The better ones might get specialized bulk mailer/statistic software, but overall, their best offense is no offense - do nothing - work in legacy mode and/or compliant with the expectations.
Hector, based on a semi-private FBI briefing two weeks ago, the vast majority of spammers in the phishing, stock fraud, and related businesses are not amateurs or snake-oil sales people, but very sophisticated and organized criminals. One can, of course, debate the fraction of total spam the phishers and stock fraud perpetrators represent (it is a large majority of what I'm seeing these days, but I may not be normal), but the days of spamming as a completely amateur activity seem to be waning quickly.
john
