Does spam still pay?
 

I'm not looking for a career change here but I have to wonder if all this automated lame-ass spam actually generates income for someone somewhere? I can see it back in the days of naive and sort of protected AOL subscribers and new folks on the net but these days? Really? It's so easy to pick out most spam, there is excellent filtering software available, most people have at least a working knowledge of what's legit, so I wonder why "they" still bother with so much effort? Who in their right mind is actually going to send a cheque to help bring an estate payout into the country for Mr Abdul? Who's actually interested in a fake watch or cheap meds from a country you've never heard of? Yes, some phishing sites are very tricky and as are some phishing emails and malicious web sites but for the bulk of the generic lame crap that gets sent... does someone actually make money from that?

If they didn't make money, they'd stop.

Every day is someone's first day online... you just need one out of hundreds of thousands...

Yeah... but much money? Sure, a few folks might click on a link out of curiosity or even by accident so someone earns a few pennies for that each time. Weight that against the cost of masking IPs, moving servers and changing providers, resources needed to send millions of email messages, dealing with millions of bounce backs, likely network admins to help hide your trace, and then add in software like xrumor... I'd be really curious to see balance sheets from a moderate spammer operation. Porn used to be a license to print money but it's not anymore. Yes, there are some adult websites making very good money but they are not the norm and I suspect spam would be the same.

Spammers are paid to spam, and the people paying thema re getting enough money to keep doing it.

Short answer is yes.

That I understand... but it can't be much anymore.

If it wasn't that much, they'd stop doinbg it.

Disagree with that. There are likely some organizations making good money but many more that simply won't let it go. I was involved in the online adult entertainment industry a decade ago and saw the same process. Everyone making good money then things slowed down with only certain folks being profitable. All the others continued on making little if any money because it was all they knew or were creatures of habit. Willing to bet the majority of spammers are in the later category these days with a few mega machines making enough to justify the effort. It would be interesting to see behind the scenes on this one just out of curiousity...

You need to consider the spammers are probably people taking 10-100 USD/EUR/GBP jobs, from countries where that much money goes a heck of a lot further.