Spam Kings

Introduction

Most businesses jump at the opportunity for free publicity. But none of the email marketers, or spammers, profiled in this book were eager to see their stories in print. In fact, some have even threatened lawsuits over its publication.

No wonder that Spam Kings is the first book to publicly unmask the people behind the junk email problem. As Jennifer Archie, a leading anti-spam attorney, recently told me, a spammer’s main protection is anonymity.

“Once you’ve exposed a spamming John Doe, he doesn’t have a legal defense. So he’ll guard his anonymity with everything he has,” says Archie.

By deftly using anonymity, spammers have tapped into a vast market. Since most spam-related sales transactions are furtive, reliable statistics are hard to come by. But a study published by the U.S.-based Direct Marketing Association estimated that consumers spent over $32 billion in 2003 on products and services advertised by email.

In the process, some say spam has nearly ruined email. Over 60 percent of all email traffic in the first half of 2004 was spam, according to email filtering firm Brightmail. (Only three years ago, the volume of unsolicited commercial email was just 8 percent of all message traffic.) In 2004, an estimated five trillion spam messages will clog Internet users’ in-boxes. AOL alone blocks over one billion spam messages every day. According to Ferris Research, junk email costs society $10 billion in lost productivity, filtering software, and other expenses.

Once a problem ...