Re: AP: "Man gets prison after hundreds of thousands of spam e-mails"

mike weber <fairportfan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Hundreds of thousands to which he confessed.
> Do you honestly believe a spammer would send out that few?

Good point.  I guess it's like saying the Ordovician period was
seconds ago.  It was -- about 10^16 seconds ago.

But why believe he got $3.5 million dollars?  Spammers are lucky to
make minimum wage.  If he got a dollar for every million spams --
a typical rate -- to get $3.5 million he must have sent over three
*trillion* spams.  Possible, but unlikely.

Even if he sent that many spams, there are only so many suckers out
there, and just because each of them will send the spammer ten bucks
when they get a spam from him doesn't mean each of them will send the
spammer ten thousand bucks when they get a thousand spams from him.
It simply doesn't scale that way.

I would be astonished if all spammers put together have gotten $3.5
million, at least if you exclude Nigerian "419" spams.

(I am of course using an American trillion, 10^12.)
-- 
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html
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