From: Yakov Shafranovich <research(_at_)solidmatrix(_dot_)com>
...
I was wondering about that as well. Would hiring people for go through the
human interface test increases the costs for spammers? Does it matter since
the cost is so small anyway? What about in a C/R system where a human
interface test is used, would spammers actually go ahead and hire people to
pass the test from each bounced message?
Let's do some arithmetic. At $10/hour and 10 seconds per challenge
answered or account created, the cost would be about $0.03 address.
That sounds a little but not very high to send mail until the
challenge whitelist entry is deleted by the spam target. It sounds
low for a valid sender account that can be used for millions of
messages for days until the free provider notices enough bounces
or receives a complaint and terminates it.
Free providers often impose delays of more than 10 seconds for
account creation. That can be handled by giving your $10/hour
employees big monitors and have them run several windows simultaneously
to overlap with the delays. Pay them by the account created or
challenge answered to keep them busy. Use software to automate
most of the process, including counting and checking the work.
Don't worry about the U.S. labor laws about piece work, since
you're probably breaking lots of other laws.
I wonder how much of the flood of "work at home" spam today involves
free mail account creation jobs?
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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