[Info-vax] SFF and MIME

[Steven Underwood]

"Wilm Boerhout" <w6.boerhout at planet.nl> wrote in message 
news:4b23d911$0$14118$703f8584 at textnews.kpn.nl...
> This is an interesting pov. Spam only "works" because 0.00001% of a large 
> number of addressees actually "buys" the "product". That is why the sender 
> is willing to pay for the advertising: (s)he makes a profit. If it were 
> unprofitable, it would disappear. Hence, marketing budget.
>
> /W
>
That pov is shared by many spam fighters.

http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html
http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/14.html
http://spam.abuse.net/overview/whatisspam.shtml

With spammers, the cost to the sender is very low... the same as it costs 
you to receive it, the price of your internet connection.  Most spam these 
days is sent through botnets, groups of virus infected computers controlled 
more by the spammers than by their owners so they can send millions of 
pieces of spam from around the world with a single command that is unlikely 
to be tracked back to them.  There is virtually no outlay of money for the 
advertizing because they would likely be paying for that connection any way.

Spammers also make money setting up other spammers (selling the addresses 
they have collected, get rich at home schemes, etc).