At 05:29 PM 3/22/2002 -0800, you wrote:

>Okay, I understand there's a big market for porn, but what
>about the rest of it?

One way spammers can make money is by generating sales leads that they can 
then sell to others.

One of the best recent examples I can think of occurred during the series 
of 11 or so rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. Home mortgage refi spammers 
were collecting contact information from recipients at a spamvertised web 
sites, and selling those leads to mortgage brokers.

I've seen a variation on this theme just within the last week, in which an 
"accountant matching service" was selling leads generated in a similar 
fashion to bookkeeping firms and small businesses.

>I'm surprised that there are enough buyers to make it
>worthwhile for any spammer, especially since so many of
>the web sites and email addresses get shut down after a
>short time.

Me, too. I think it's a numbers game. The expense associated with starting 
a spamming enterprise is very low, while the cost to the ISP to shut them 
down is somewhat higher. If that's true (and I am not certain that it is), 
then it seems to me that there must always be more spammers to be shut down 
than there are resources to shut them down with.

>Maybe some spammers themselves are "marks" -- duped into
>buying lists of email addresses hoping they'll get new
>customers?

I think that this is absolutely true.

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