It's a numbers game. The cost is almost zero to send, and one success can make a few thousand dollars or more. That's a ton of money in some of the world, especially parts of Africa and South America.
Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
31–40 of 194 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
#32It still works. You don't need a lot of little old men buying knockoff Viagra or little old ladies looking for love to make a decent wage in a lot of countries. Also, you take for granted that everyone is benefiting from Google and Microsoft's SPAM filters attached to GMail and O365/Outlook. There are still a LOT of email addresses running on SMTP or even POP3. And a LOT of those email addresses are legacy addressses…
As someone who snagged a FirstInitialExtremlyCommonLastname@outlook.com address (think asmith@,bpatel, etc), I can say that their spam filter is absolutely worthless. Never bothered to use that account because it was so horrendous.
Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
#33Outright spam is one thing. What’s more prevalent these days and vastly more annoying is corporate spam. Every purchase now is apparently free license to send you pure garbage emails multiple times per day.
Please report spam on these. The email providers won't know they were unsolicited and unwanted if you just unsubscribe.
Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
#34It's a real conspiracy. Simple as that.
Google proved they could beat spam around year 2000, but now suddenly they are now letting messages through with headers that a toddler could tell you are fake.
They know it' spam, we all do. But they let it in anyway because there's some secret economic or political dynamic we aren't privy to.
Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
#35Spam exists because sending as others here have mentioned is free. The knee-jerk reaction might be to make it not free and technically that would be rather simple. Beyond adding pre-approved DKIM signed domains to an approve-list, one could modify existing grey-list daemons to require either a one-time code or click a URL to enter authentication to approve the sender and add rate limiting for know abusers, but that isn't the problem. People are accustom to how email currently works and adding any barriers or changing communication flows or adding cost adds friction. Businesses and people will oppose friction.
I would be curious to see if anyone here has added such barriers and what their results were. What methods did you use to make spam expensive for spammers and how did it affect your legit customers and prospects?
Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
#36Because it works. Still relevant, from Microsoft Research:
"Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?"
This approach suggests an answer to the question in the title. Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
#37Outright spam is one thing. What’s more prevalent these days and vastly more annoying is corporate spam. Every purchase now is apparently free license to send you pure garbage emails multiple times per day.
Whenever I order something online, I always uncheck the box that says "I want to receive your newsletter" or never check it the first place. Inevitably, in the next few days, I start to receive their product offerings
Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
#38Outright spam is one thing. What’s more prevalent these days and vastly more annoying is corporate spam. Every purchase now is apparently free license to send you pure garbage emails multiple times per day.
Whenever I order something online, I always uncheck the box that says "I want to receive your newsletter" or never check it the first place. Inevitably, in the next few days, I start to receive their product offerings
Guess what happens when you click "unsubscribe"?
Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost for spammers can be actually free because they often use botnets and compromised accounts to send spam.
I reckon it’s just a numbers game. Gmail will every now and then let absolutely ridiculous emails through the spam filter. Badly spelled, bogus URLs, with $$$$ all over the place and All CAPS and just so clearly to any human a phishing attempt or just general scumminess and gmail takes a look at it and says “yup everything seems legit here. On to the inbox!”
My Gmail inbox from 2004 is 99% spam. I've tried everything I can imagine, nothing works. It is absolute chaos.
Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I order something online, I always uncheck the box that says "I want to receive your newsletter" or never check it the first place. Inevitably, in the next few days, I start to receive their product offerings
Guess what happens when you click "unsubscribe"?
Your email gets added to known good addresses list and sold around?