harris development

Bruce Schneier has a good article up at Forbes.com about "Why Spam Won't Go Away":

Spam is filling up the Internet, and it's not going away anytime soon.

It's not just e-mail. We have voice-over-IP spam, instant message spam, cellphone text message spam, blog comment spam and Usenet newsgroup spam. And, if you think broadly enough, these computer-network spam delivery mechanisms join the ranks of computer telemarketing (phone spam), junk mail (paper spam), billboards (visual space spam) and cars driving through town with megaphones (audio spam). It's all basically the same thing--unsolicited marketing messages--and only by understanding the problem at this level of generality can we discuss solutions.

....

Spam is such a common tactic not because it's particularly effective--the response rates for spam are very low--but because it's ridiculously cheap. Typically, spammers charge less than a hundredth of a cent per recipient. And that number is what spamming houses charge their customers to deliver spam; if you're a clever hacker, you can build your own spam network for much less money.

You can read the full article here.