Meltdown - But No Let-up in Viagra Ads.

 

This letter from Richard Whitbread appeared in the FT.

Sir, Is it possible that one benefit of the meltdown of credit lending will be a reduction in the number of spam emails I receive telling me I have been pre-approved for some unimaginably large amount of borrowing in US dollars? I wish I could see a similar end to the enthusiasm for telling me about Viagra.

I replied as follows :-

Richard Whitbread is unlikely to see much of a drop in spam because of the problems in the financial system.

A year ago, spam to our spam trap and analysis system was running at about 2,000 messages a day. Now it is around 10,000 in every twenty four hours. Over that period loan offers in the trap have fluctuated to as high as 10% of the total and almost disappeared for some weeks. They now sit at around 6%. Even if loan offers stopped completely, their place would be taken with the endless rise in Viagra and other drug ads which have risen in the last year from about 40% to a figure yesterday of over 60%. There are also plenty of other scams coming on stream, including the latest one of fake subscriptions designed to sign your computer up as a spam-generator.

The only good news is that the so-called Pump and Dump scams promoting shares have fallen from about 40% to a few percent and almost nothing on certain days.

Why should this be so?

Because the SEC has taken strong action against companies that are mentioned in the scams and restricted trading in their shares. There’s no point pushing something you can’t buy and sell.

So this action by the SEC has been many times more successful, than the US Can-Spam Act (Often called the Shut Up and Eat Your Spam Act) and all the legislation enacted by the EU. We are fighting nuclear and chemical weapons with pea-shooters and tissues.

Something must be done soon, as if my five times increase in spam transposes to the whole Internet, we will all be in an Internet meltdown of immeasurable proportions.

It wasn't published.