Anti-Spam Vigilantes And Just How Much Money Does Spam Bring In
from the welcome-to-anti-spam-day dept
In honor of "global anti-spam day" there are plenty of stories about spam out there (ok, actually, that's not true, there are plenty of stories about spam every day). The Wall Street Journal is running two stories that are a bit different. First is an article about online "vigilantes" who are tracking down spammers and spamming them back, using the same methods spammers use. As discussed in the past, I don't necessarily agree with this practice (though, I will admit there is something satisfying in reading about spammers having to deal with these attacks). On the flip side, we have the ever-popular Direct Marketing Association claiming that email marketing generates $7 billion in sales each year (hmmm... think they're a little biased?). Of course, most of this is through emails that people specifically requested. Though, the study does claim that 9% of people they spoke to are complete suckers - and have bought from spam.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I love this quote!
So by that logic, when *I* get 150 of the same spam email and it shuts down my hotmail address for the weekend that's "free speech" right?
[ link to this | view in thread ]