Who really falls for spam, anyway - Blog Life Sammy

Who really falls for spam, anyway

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Who really falls for spam, anyway -

Any conversation about spam usually comes to this assertion: that spam is so obviously fraudulent that no one could ever fall for it, no? I worked for five years spam hunt for one of the three major Web search engines, and here's the truth: spam is so cheap that spammers only need a few people to fall for their methods for them win their life. It is common knowledge among spammers and those who hunt them. Although I mostly worked with spam search engines, the principle is the same for email. Every day at my job, we watched in disbelief on fraudulent websites clearly wondering who would never click on them.

Remember that PT Barnum quote, "there's a sucker born every minute"? Well, it does not really tell. But that does not make it less true feeling.

According to a recent survey covered PC World ". About a six consumers have at some time following a spam message, affirming the economic incentive for spammers to keep churning out millions of nasty pitches per day "Yup, one in six of us was a sucker But at some point it is important to look at what they mean by it just means they have opened a piece of spam. "done."; this does not necessarily mean that they have actually purchased the Viagara

So how many bought? World PC points to another study, this one conducted by the University of California, showing that "the people of many who actually made a purchase following a spam pitch was just a fraction of a percent. " With a low customer base, how do they make money?

We are back to the idea of ​​margins. Spam is cheap; this is not a quality company. But also, spam not everything is designed to conduct a transaction. Some of it is just designed to infect your computer with malware. Access to infected computers is often sold on the black market to other pirates. This can occur with email or search engine spam.

We are told that in the first study, "nearly two-thirds of the 800 respondents felt somewhat experienced in Internet security." Anecdotally, I can tell you that Internet users, even experienced admit being phished or fooled into clicking on spam, either by e-mail, social networking site, or search engine results.

As the article suggests, you should keep your machine patched with updates regular software updates. Also, be careful what you click on. Finally, consider using some type of Internet security software that can alert you to malicious links and protect your system against viruses and unauthorized access. You can see our comparisons and read our reviews here.