Profile of a Spammer, from The Netly News

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

**********

http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1569,00.html

The Netly News (http://netlynews.com/)
November 10, 1997

Profile of a Spammer
by Robin Miller

       Whatever you do, don't call Kevin Jones a spammer. "Spammers are
   people who send all kinds of e-mail to everyone. I don't do that.
   Don't lump me with the spammers," he insists. "I send out nothing but
   targeted e-mail. It's not the same thing."

        But since Kevin's "targeting" has all the precision and subtlety
   of a sawed-off shotgun, chances are you've been spending your time
   deleting his spam. Since Kevin entered what he calls the "Internet
   promotion" business in January 1997, he's fired off more than 25
   million pieces of "targeted e-mail" on behalf of everything from
   credit repair kits to surplus merchandise. Every month he hones his
   software, attracts new clients -- and, most importantly, adds more
   unsuspecting users to his mailing lists. With a little luck, he'll
   send out up to 100 million pieces of e-mail next year. And since he
   gets paid by the piece, just like companies that handle direct postal
   mail promotions, the more e-mail Kevin sends out, the happier he is.

[...]

     Software is the second key to success in Internet direct
   marketing. Kevin's favorite program is NewsBlaster. It's probably the
   most popular spamware on the market today, and Kevin is one of its
   most devout adherents. NewsBlaster lets him extract up to 15,000
   e-mail addresses an hour from targeted newsgroups -- and automatically
   delete addresses with .edu, .gov and .org top-level domains (which
   tend to be more hostile to bulk e-mail than .net or .com). Kevin also
   prefers to bypass AOL members "because AOL sues guys like me a lot,"
   so he has NewsBlaster delete AOL members from his lists, and also
   removes e-mail addresses with more than 30 characters "because they
   upload so slow, and in this business speed is everything."

[...]

       But despite these precautions, Kevin and his clients still get
   their share of flames. "I figure on maybe 500 every time I send out
   e-mail," he says, "and I still have trouble figuring out why people do
   that. I'm a little guy trying to make a living on the Internet,
   helping other little guys make a few bucks. I'm not out stealing, I'm
   not hurting anyone... People who don't like getting e-mail are just
   making life hard for small guys to make a buck, that's all they're
   doing."

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