Subject: [ASRG] 2. analysis and characterization work - "regional" spam

From: Andreas Saurwein <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 13:13:18 -0300

Here in Brazil I find more and more what I like to call "national" or even 
"regional" spam.
This are clearly home-brewn advertisings, almost all of them contain full 
company information (address, telephone, contact person) and are sent to 
very mixed lists of recipients. They are trying to sell almost everything 
from t-shirts to coffee mugs to dental services.

The most common mailer is outlook express (probably with some imported CSV 
files).

It does not fit in the mass-spammer profile, yet its still spam. The amount 
is sometimes amazing and exceeds the usual viagra and HGH spam.

I think that kind of spam would probably be eliminated by legislation.

Are there similar occurances in other countries? To which extent?

Andreas

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From: Markus Stumpf <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 22:15:13 +0200

> Are there similar occurances in other countries? To which extent?

Whether it is regional/national depends IMHO on the source. We had/have
customers that start their own homemade newsletters. Yes they use
Outlook.
As some of them have small stores (e.g. photo shops, copy shops, music
clubs) it is obvious that their customers are from the region they're in.
So yes, UCE with a regional character is increasing.

I have talked to a few of them personally. The addresses mostly come
from business cards (contact database) or their customer database and they 
hear/see so much about e-marketing (thanks IBM) in TV that they try to
do their own. Some of them fail badly, because they are not aware of how
much email addresses change and have typos and when they send out to
1500 contacts they receive up to 50% bounces.
We try to convince them that double opt-in mailinglists with bounce
handling are the better choice for them and most of them are really
happy with it. We use the address list they give us to generate double
opt-in requests (with an explanation of what is happening) and from my
experience about 20-30% really subscribe.

	\Maex

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