Internet Defense Technologies

There is a new study out which offers some evidence that spam mass mailings can generate sales at a notable rate.

Results show that in the weight-loss category, a significant percentage receiving spam-mail pitches purchased the products.

• 18.5% of those who described themselves as suffering from weight issues bought products
• 5% of those without those hurdles purchased them.

Even, the lesser 5% conversion rate dwarfs direct mail and likely much of so-called permission-based email.

Open rates were also high:

• 40%-plus of those with weight problems opened messages
• 18% of those without weight troubles opened the messages

Helps to answer why people keep sending spam out.

The study appears in the latest issue of the Southern Medical Journal and was conducted by Joshua Fogel, an associate professor in the Brooklyn College economics department, and Sam Shlivko, a former student at the college.

More information:

Losing Argument: Study Finds Spam Works For Weight Loss Pitches

Spam Works for Weight Loss

Malware:  This is a term that is a compound word formed from Malicious and software. Shortened to MalWare.

The word Mal comes from the Latin word Malus which means bad. Ware is usually used to refer a kind or class of merchandise or of a manufactured item like, silverware; glassware, software.

The derivation of this is Germanic and is a literal translation of the word ware.

So, basically this new mad up word means any type of software that is malicious in nature that could cause harm to your computer. This type of software is easily downloaded by visiting a site that offers “free” things. If your computer is not protected by a service that guards against this type of activity you may find an infected computer that no longer operates up to par.

Every year or two, Ferris Research updates its estimates for the total cost of spam, earlier this year they did the 2009 estimates .

Their estimates: "Worldwide, spam will cost us all $130 billion; in the U.S. alone, $42 billion. That’s a 30% increase over our 2007 estimates, which themselves were a 100% increase over our 2005 figures."

They further explain the breakdown of where this is costing money:

• User productivity cost (deleting spam, looking for false positives, etc.): 85%
• Help desk cost (IT helping end users deal with spam): 10%
• Spam control software/hardware/service (licensing fees, amortized capital costs, etc.): 5%

Well with Total Mail Defense making it so you have don’t have to delete spam or look for false positives that reduces that amount by 85%.

I am feeling pretty good about our assistance in helping the economy by reducing the money wasted.

Just one of our systems blocked 13.1 million messages in one week.

That equaled 99% of all traffic sent through it!  Meaning that our customers servers never had to bear that load and this barrage never slowed down their systems.

With 1% of email making it past our first level of filtering, another 27% were blocked at the next stage.

Through all of this, not one legitimate email was blocked.

This is WAY more than usual amounts of traffic, email spam is definitely not slowing down.

Some really fun and good articles to read:

Computerworld article - Top 10 spam-friendly registrars named and shamed

Computerworld article - Undercover: The Company that Did Everything Wrong

Salt Lake Tirbune - Nigerian web scam bilked Utah out of $2.5M

That honor goes to Angelina Jolie who is the most popular celebrity name used by spammers to tempt people into opening unsolicited email, according to new research.

The other famous figures in the top 10 table ranged from those well-known internet favourites Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, to less obviously appealing figures like Hillary Clinton and Osama bin Laden.

Spammers use the names of celebrities - frequently with a sexual twist - to encourage people to open emails which often contain damaging viruses.

Spam email bait top 10:
1) Angelina Jolie
2) Barack Obama
3) Paris Hilton
4) Britney Spears
5) Jessica Simpson
6) Hillary Clinton
7) George W Bush
8) Osama Bin Laden
9) Brad Pitt
10) Michael Jackson

Original article: Angelina Jolie most popular spam email ‘bait’ from UK Telegraph

Saw a report from the Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) recently released a list of the top email scams:
1. Advance Fee Fraud
2. Phishing
3. Check Overpayment Scams
4. Work-at-Home Scams
5. Weight Loss Claims
6. Foreign Lotteries
7. Cure-all products
8. Investment Schemes
9. Pay-in-Advance Credit Offers
10. Debt Relief

You can forward any emails you get on this to spam@uce.gov

Forbes also did a list of the top scams which all of which can be done via email. There list was:
1. Home Construction
2. Bait and Switch Mortgage
3. Fake Check
4. Internet Coaching Services
5. Layaway Loans/Payday Loans

Hopefully these lists will help you be aware of what can come to your email box and that it should just be deleted. Don’t get trapped in one of these scams.

When I tell people that I work for an email spam company, one of the first and most surprising questions I get asked (after how do I stop the spam) is why do spammers spam.

Well, results from a new survey by Marshal show that 29% of respondents to a recent survey admitted they made purchases from spam messages. This is up from 2004 where only 20% admitted to doing so.

That pretty much says it all, unfortunately, spammers do it for the money and enough people buy stuff or get caught by the scams to make it worth their while to keep going.

My objective, educate everyone I met on email spam, how not to get caught, not to respond and definitely not to buy. Really in the end, if we hit the spammers where it counts (in the back pocket) they will eventually give up.

We went on a trip and one of the key items for us was to make sure that there was wireless access so we could check our email and do our work.

Happy to find out that we aren’t alone according to the fourth annual Email Addiction Survey from AOL Mail where 19% of respondents choose vacation spots with access to email.

Additionally, 62% of people check work email on the weekends and 59% check email from the bathroom (up from 53% last year). All of these making me feel more normal because I admit to doing all of the above as well.

With a good email spam blocker in place I fortunately don’t have a problem with having to go through a bounce of spam. I can’t imagine what these people do who have to wade through all that email spam (with email spam being 95% of emails sent out) each time they check.

To find out more about the survey, including some breakdowns by city, visit their website here.

McAfee did an interesting little experiment of signing up a bunch of people to answer every single email spam they got.

The idea scares me to no end, but if someone else is going to fund it all and set me up with separate identities so my real stuff doesn’t get hit, then I might do it.

There was a lot of coverage of it while it happened like here and here.

You can see the conclusion at their site the S.P.A.M. Experiment.