Anti Spam - SpamUnit

Spam wouldn’t take place if it wasn’t so profitable. The spam industry is a big deal, and has made a few people extremely rich. However, as it’s illegal in many jurisdictions, it’s difficult to get the exact details for spam kings as you would for, say, the head of a Fortune 500 company. Nonetheless, we know enough about some spammers to be able to draw conclusions about the spam industry as a whole.

The spam industry is said to be dominated by a small group of powerful individuals and spam gangs. Some estimates say that 80% of the world’s spam that arrives in North American and European inboxes is courtesy of just 180-200 spam gangs comprising 500-600 people, based all over the world from the USA to Russia to Hong Kong and beyond. Spamhaus, one of the world’s foremost antispam websites, maintains a list of some of these top spammers. What distinguishes them from regular business is the lack of transparency and of a home office. The mobile nature of the spam industry is such that spammers are often on the run from the law, and moving between ISPs and mail servers. They need to keep moving to keep up their income - and maintain their freedom. Of course, it’s risky - but it can also reap big rewards. That’s why spammers sometimes work together to cover all aspects of the market.

Indeed, most make their money not just off one specific type of spam, but off several kinds of product via affiliate schemes. They may even sell server access to other spammers in exchange for a cut of their profits on pharmaceutical spam, product sales spam and financial deal spam. Indeed, hosting and referring customers is a huge part of the spam industry, and one that most of the big players are heavily involved in. After all, secure server access and access to configurable spam software are invaluable when spammers generally get banned from ISPs soon after they begin their activity.

As well as the spam gangs there are smaller companies that also take part in global spamming - sometimes even unwittingly. Poor data protection practices or ignorance of localised spam laws has seen some otherwise-reputable businesses fall foul of the legal system. However, this form of spam industry is very much a minority pursuit; spam tends to be organised and done in full knowledge of those involved.

That is, of course, without the knowledge of botnet computer owners. In an attempt to evade capture and cut down on overheads, spammers have for a few years now developed virus programs that cause “botnet” or “zombie PCs” to become infected, programming them to send off massive reams of unwanted spam email. They can also infect other computers on the network, or send spam virii to spam recipients. It’s another way of the spam industry keeping its overheads down - why pay for mail-sending computers when you can use someone else’s? - and evade capture by obfuscating the original source of the mail.

Indeed, spammers will use any avenue they can to reach a customer, even going beyond botnets and email. Mobile spam is growing, and seems to be a more open market than traditional email spam, particularly in China where the cellphone industry is expanding at a drastic rate. Similarly, forum spam, instant messaging (via MSN, AOL and other chat programs) spam and even old-fashioned automated telephone diallers are in fashion in various parts of the world. Again, many of these will be run by those spam gangs that plague our inboxes. Blog spam is also a growing problem; sites like blogger.com are easy for spammers to access and post to, so many of the spam gangs have found ways to reach thousands of blog readers without having to abuse email servers. What’s more, some of these comments will then appear on Google searches and in page caches, expanding the audience. It’s no wonder that blog spam is one of the fastest-growing areas of spam gang involvement.

The spam industry is here to stay. True, the laws are catching up with spammers in many jurisdictions, but with so much profit to be made, and a still relatively small chance of being caught and punished, it’s clear to see why the spam industry has little problems in attracting new workers and finding new ways past the legal and technological challenges of the 21st century.