There has been a lot of discussion on the Web and in print about spam lately (the e-mail nuisance, not the yummy meat-like product) – this will be a little more of the same.

Like any other complicated subject, spam is not a simple binary issue – you can slice and dice it any number of ways.

This slice and dice will look at the two sources of spam:

• Hacks – Viruses, scams (419 etc), phishing and so on. Some benign.
• Sales – Advertising; trying to get someone to buy something or visit site.

Now, we’re never going to be free of the hacks – like Hillary commenting on Everest, the hacks will continue simply because they are possible. And once one hole is patched, another will open. We might get better at filtering out this mail and so on, but it’s probably always going to be around. Get over it.

The second arena is a little more problematic: It’s not as simple to say this type of spam can be stopped from ever being sent (let’s ignore filtering etc.) or whatever.

The sales spam is pretty much like telemarking: Usually unsolicited messages that reach you, wanting you to buy some product or service.

I’ve always said that I personally don’t know anyone who has ever purchased something as the result of a cold telemarking call, yet the calls keep coming. This means that telemarketing is profitable: Somewhere somebody is buying stuff.

And telemarketing is expensive – it usually involves a real person on the other end of the line.

Spam, on the other hand, is cheap. Just as easy to send to a million folks as three.

So, even if virtually all folks stop buying as a result of spam, we seem to be fated to continue getting sales spam because it’s economically prudent – if you get a 0.00001 response rate but sell one $10 product for a $5 spam cost…well, you’re ahead. You’ll keep on doing it.

That’s scary.

This isn’t any new information I’ve uncovered, obviously. But it’s frightening when you break it down in such a simple manner as this and see the results. Ouch.

The really sad part of this is that it shows that spam pays: So, we can expect to see both types of spam in other Net media, such as IM and RSS. The latter is particularly frightening. But why not? Once the crackers figure out the method, the sales spammer will exploit these, uh, exploits.

Brave new world…