The antivirus company Sophos sicced the Russian head of its Canadian antivirus lab on various scammy sites (original report) and discovered that entry-level scammers can do pretty well for themselves. Sophos snuck into the admin panel for the affiliate of one scam site , which offered free porn if you installed a nefarious video codec (really spyware). The affiliate in question made $6,500 for Aug. 2008, probably using templates and software provided by the scam network.

Another common scam involves using affiliates to sell fake prescription drugs, ostensibly from Canada. Since actual drugs aren't involved, the seller can afford to give the affiliate a 40 percent kickback; Sophos believes a single spam campaign could net $16,000 per day.

It's unclear whether Eastern Europeans can continue to con Americans into spending tons of money on completely ineffective health care "solutions," with internet propaganda, now that so many American scammers have jumped into that same game.

————— Forwarded message —————
From: Federated Media
Date: Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 9:05 AM
Subject: A Holiday Gift from FM, $5 CPM's
To: melissa@melissagira.com

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FM Self-Serve Homepage
Online Marketing Idea Exchange

Can you spot the one that doesn't belong?

This much is easy to understand: Sending 100 friends a link to your company's site is spam by any reasonable person's definition, whether you think it's "efficient" or not. Facebook has to crack down on such behavior because its users are getting sick of a surfeit of irrelevant messages, whether they're from friends or advertisers. Web security firm Cloudmark says 37 percent of Facebook users have noticed an uptick in spam over the past six months. What's more, Facebook is dealing with an increasing barrage of worms, viruses, phishing scams, as well as security threats for which researchers haven't invented suitably scary jargon yet.

Marshal's analysis: The response rates to spam — especially if you only count the messages that don't get filtered — are higher than most people presume, and that's why spammers keep at it. My take: People who buy from spam are much more likely to take surveys. (Photo by cursedthing)

Roger W. Neal, senior vice president and general manager of BusinessWeek Digital, said that as Business Exchange pages work their way up through search engine results, the site should double BusinessWeek’s traffic on the Web within two years, allowing it to sell more ads.

There you have it, bluntly, from a senior BusinessWeek executive: Business Exchange is a search-engine spam trap, meant to capture Google users on their way to actual information. What makes the plan brilliant: In the short term, ad salespeople will sell these pages at BusinessWeek.com rates, raking in a fortune on throwaway content. In the long term, though, BusinessWeek risks turning all of its online inventory into junk by association.

(Photo by Chester Higgins/The New York Times)

"Follow spam" is what happens when a Twitter user sets up an automated script to subscribe to thousands of individual users' feeds, found by crawling Twitter's pages. Follow-spammers aren't interested in reading all those people's updates. They're actually hoping their new pretend-friends will follow them back in exchange, creating an opt-in list for their messages. These may be marketing, or just personal drama.

It seems like a victimless crime, but there are two problems caused by comment spam:

• 1. Each user gets a notice whenever a comment spammer starts following them. If you're getting Twitter on your cellphone, it means frequent interruption by annoying "TotalStranger is now following you on Twitter" text messages. If you don't have an unlimited messaging plan, the messages cost you as much as 15 cents each.
• 2. Williams's servers are already overloaded. "In extreme cases," he writes, "these automated accounts have followed so many people they've threatened the performance of the entire system."

That's it. I know, hardly a crisis. White people need something to be uptight about, and Ev Williams has delivered. I give it another three months before there's a service mag called Twitterer at my local Borders.

(Photo by AP/Euler)

He would earn a fee from an unnamed third-party company based out of Houston based on the number of emails he sent out. In the years that he was active, between 2003 and 2006, the DOJ claims he had over $3.5 million deposited into his bank accounts. Davidson plead guilty to falsifying header information to send spam; tax evasion; and criminal forfeiture. He'd been sentenced to spend 21 months in the minimum-security prison, as well as ordered to pay $714,139 in restitution. Happy with the payback?

[Reuters]

I am the owner of ten Facebook profiles. Every single one of my profiles has at minimum 200 friends. I have aggregated the friends for each persona organically. I will briefly mention the manner in which I compiled a list of genuine friends for each persona.



Step 1: Develop a persona with an intense interest on specific subjects/topics
Step 2: Integrate that individual into communities/forums based on their interests
Step 3: Stimulate conversation inside communities/forums and interact with other users
Step 4: Establish the persona inside the communities/forums
Step 5: Begin to add friends organically



The ten profiles I have are as follows, and can be sold separately if requested:

• Samantha (age 19) – loves music, makes art, and enjoys the outdoors
• John (age 35) – health purist, into yoga, active runner, amateur cyclists, and into healthy eating.
• David (age 23) – Computer programmer, big gamer, into the latest gadgets, and is a blogger
• Michael (age 42) – Intellectual, reads books, enjoys poetry, has a weakness for fast food, and loves his two kids
• Carrie (age 26) – Fashionista, craves gossip magazines, doodles potential outfits, and follows celebrity developments
• Erik (age 29) – Big beer drinker, watches a ton of sports, likes sports cars, and likes to cook
• Holly (age 18) – Big into volunteering, loves reading, loves school, and interested in travelling abroad
• Peter (age 19) – Athlete, big into college life, likes drama and mystery movies, and can’t live without mac and cheese
• Shannon (age 33) – Design aficionado, into exploring a city’s culture, active artist, and
  is latched onto her iPhone
• Kristin (age 40) – Live at home mom, loves cooking for her family, wishes she had a new car, wants a vacation to the beach, and is really into gardening

These personas are geographically dispersed, and they all live in major cities across the United States. I am leaving the last name of the profiles absent, as not to be identifiable by Facebook employees. I am not providing a screenshot of the profiles either, but they are available if a serious request is made.



All of these Facebook personas engage on a daily basis with other Facebook members, they share content, and they update their status. They have a variety of applications installed on their Facebook page, and they have a substantial amount of comments left on their wall. Additionally, these personas post pictures they find interesting on their Facebook page.



I currently am testing the waters, and would like to see if any marketers are interested in using these. Under the right conditions and for a fair price you will receive full control of these personas, as well as associated emails. A walk through each of the characters is possible if an individual is serious about their interest, and is willing to assign a value to the persona ahead of time.



I would love to hear from you. Please contact me at: pseudopr@gmail.com for questions