Spammers Motivation?

Dog Folks wrote:

pconroy328 wrote:
LIL (Last in Line) almost all spam posting is now automated. So there's pretty much zero effort. Which makes *any* reward, no matter how low the probability, high.

So... Would not a CAPTCHA image in the sign up area of the web site stop that cold?

Or is this site just not willing, for whatever reason, to implement it?

Thanks for of you helping me understand this stuff.

A captcha does not always stop them. There is lots of bad code, there are lots of bugs, and there are lots of creative hackers who can find ways to make things do stuff they were not intended to do. In the case of the spam in this forum, it is likely one of two scenarios:
1) manually creating accounts, which as mentioned is less likely
2) someone found a way to automate the process on this forum by using code to "understand" the captcha or to bypass the captcha all together.

Motivation is 99.9%money-
Having the same public email address for 15 years now, I get a ton of spam (between 300 and 1000 per day)- enough that when I used local spam software, it took my computer 10-15 minutes to download and filter all of it. Now I let Google filter the spam.
On one of my blogs, I get between 10 and 150 spam postings a day- every now and then I get one like this:

The Spammer wrote:
{This|This particular|This kind of|This specific|That|The following|This unique|It|The|This approach|This valuable} week’s {calendar|diary|work schedule|appointments|schedule|date|appointment setting}, {April|04|Apr|The spring|May|August|The spring of|June|July|February|Spring} {11|Eleven|14|12|13|10|Twelve|9|Thirteen|Sixteen|Nine} {to|in order to|to be able to|for you to|to help|so that you can|that will|to help you|towards|to make sure you|to successfully} {17|Seventeen|18|19|Teen|Seventeen-year-old|Eighteen|Nineteen|16|20|15} {By|Through|Simply by|By simply|By means of|By way of|By just|As a result of|From|Just by|With} {Posted|Published|Submitted|Put up|Placed|Uploaded|Created|Released|Shared|Circulated|Issued}: {3|Three|Several|Three or more|A few|3 or more|About three|4|Various|A variety of|Many}:{25|Twenty five|Twenty-five|30|20|26|24|40|27|31|Twenty six} {PM|Pm hours|Evening|Pm}, {April|04|Apr|The spring|May|August|The spring of|June|July|February|Spring} {17|Seventeen|18|19|Teen|Seventeen-year-old|Eighteen|Nineteen|16|20|15}, {2013|The year 2013} {Tuesday|Wednesday|Thursday|Mondy|The following thursday|The following friday|Friday|Monday|Tues|Saturday|Sunday}, {April|04|Apr|The spring|May|August|The spring of|June|July|February|Spring} {16|Sixteen|Of sixteen|07|04|06|15|18|14|12|17} Co-op {Condo|Condominium|Residence|Property|House|Apartment|Rental|Flat|Home|Dwelling|Unit} Expo {More than|A lot more than|Greater than|Over|In excess of|Above|Around|Much more than|Even more than|Well over|Beyond} {270|260|Two seventy}

I let Akismet handle that-

Akismet has protected your site from 33,022 spam comments already.

One of my E-mail addresses used to get 20,000 to 100,000 spams a day, but it was around for a long time (since the 1990s.) I still have the domain, but since there is no way to deal with such a deluge, the domain is all but shut down due to that.

The latest generation of spammers are using links to websites which will infect/compromise a computer the second they visit the site, usually through older Flash, Java, Acrobat, or other add-on exploits. Some sites even will try to attack Android devices (by trying to get you to download a bogus "securityupdate.apk" file.) If the first round of exploits doesn't work, there is always phishing or asking someone to download a "PDF" which is actually a "pdf...exe" file, and is a Trojan horse.

The newest attacks are pretty nasty. Ransomware is quite profitable these days, as well as attacks that fry actual computer hardware.

As usual, my solution is to have the web browser in a sandbox, VM, or both. I have had malware try to get out of a sandbox by creating billions of small files and directories (which does a number on the filesystem), so I like using both solutions. This way, something that completely freezes the sandbox can be just rolled back to a safe snapshot.

Email addresses are sold daily. Live (verified)email addresses are at a premium... You would be surprised to see how many financial institutions sell your email address. Yes, I'm talking about your bank among many other types of businesses...

Read the EULA's and you will see something along the lines of sharing with affiliates, 3rd parties, etc... You typically agree to this...

You don't even have to click on the links in emails. If your security is not set up proper they know you are there when the email is downloaded in your preview screen. If you have tighter security, it will ask and warn you about downloading content to view in the email...

Never open an attachment or click a link unless you are positive that it was intentionally sent to you from someone you know. Really you shouldn't even preview emails, especially from unknown sources. If someone you know wants to reach you bad enough, they will call or send you another email if the original is deleted.

And as mentioned in an earlier post, some baddies can get into someone's computer that you know and send you emails from them, or appear to be from them...

Curiosity killed the cat as well as many computers...
To sum it up, curiosity is what pays for the bad guys...

One technique that helps is to use a dedicated E-mail program rather than a Web browser for fetching E-mail. A dedicated program like Thunderbird or Outlook is a lot harder to hack than a browser where anything goes. Plus, you can have all your mail in one place, rather than separate web browser table for each site.

RayJayco wrote:
Email addresses are sold daily. Live (verified)email addresses are at a premium... You would be surprised to see how many financial institutions sell your email address. Yes, I'm talking about your bank among many other types of businesses...

Was a little surprised to find USPS sold my physical house and email address after I had filed a redirect request on-line when I moved house a couple of years ago.
I got a TON of SPAM plus actual mail from all kinds of places. Including banks "Welcoming me to the neighborhood"
(I'd moved 7 miles!)

You send out 1,000,000 spams annoying 1,000,000 people with your phony scheme.

1/10th of 1% respond, that is 1,000 pigeons ripe or the plucking.

And that is a very poor crook, A good con artist will get a much higher response rate.

Rumor has it the Goernment has a facility (PRISIM) that records all internet activity.

These Criminals cost the US more each day than Bank Robbers, Train Robbers, ALL ROBBERS, and physical theives, and all face to face criminals combined.

So why is the government not using PRISIM to track 'em down and hand them a bill equal to the cost of their craft (Each gets a bill equal to the total cost of the craft) and pay off the national debt with the proceeds of those fines?

I have had my 5 AOL addresses since Steve Case started the company close to 30 years and used to answer the phone himself. I've been teased about keeping these AOL accounts for at least 20 of those years but I get almost zero spam through them, and it functions exactly like any other ISP on the iPhone and iPad.

The company Steve Started was Quantum Communications (or rather that is the company that was started) I used their Q-Link service for several years till one day.. They just pulled the plug and changed their name to AOL

now.. it grieves me greatly that I am a Moderator on a family of forums owned by AOL... (I became a Moderator before AOL bought them).. I really want nothing to do with those folks.

I believe the OP is speaking of the random spam posts here not email. But the purpose is the same. Make money or create problems via virus. Click a link and they might be pushing a product. They also can get info like your browser, ip address, etc. Then they can target you with more spam ads as you browse.