Forget Trojan Horses, Why Not Convince Suckers To Spam For You?
from the nice-try dept
It's no secret that a large percentage of spam that goes out these days is sent via home computers who have been infected with a trojan horse that secretly sends out spam from that machine. There's been a lot of buzz recently about how some company took that idea and used it as the basis for its "business model." Instead of sneaking their software onto peoples machines, they would pay gullible people $1/hour to knowingly send out spam from their machines. Wired News is looking into the company and, while they present themselves as legitimate non-spamming marketers, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Beyond the obvious (what spamming company doesn't claim that they're perfectly legitimate, 100% opt-in email marketers?), there are some other big questions. The company wouldn't allowed Wired News to actually speak to anyone using their service - either a customer to send out spam or someone who had received money for spamming. The article also points out that most people who sign up for the service are very likely to get kicked off their ISP for spamming relatively quickly (though, perhaps not as fast as some would like). Not even mentioned is the fact that this could probably open up anyone who agrees to do this to legal liability for the spam they're sending out, since they're now agreeing to send out the spam - even if they don't know the contents of the messages they send. The whole thing sounds pretty sketchy, though, I'm sure some people will sign up. Whether they ever get any money - or just lose their internet access remains to be seen.
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misleading company name
The article doesn't even mention how suspiciously close the company's name, "Sendmails", is to the well-known "sendmail" email software (and organization of the same name). Another indication that honesty is not this company's primary attribute.
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Gee Ma ... we kin git rich quik !
Quickie math tells me that assuming you ran your computer 24/7 the most you would make is 8,736 dollars.
Now, lets subtract the cost of approximately 40 a month or 480.00 for an ISP & another 25 a month for electricity and thats just shy of 8k.
" If " and thats big one the ISP wouldn't knock the offender offline for spam they could make approximately 8k for each workstation running.
I wonder how many schlubs will do the math and run out to Circuit City and buy a bunch of workstations on the hopes that this little scheme will help them get out of the trailer park.
I fear for my in box ...
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