Real Spam CTR is 0.000008%
Despite the ultra-low effectiveness of junk emails, spammers somehow manage to earn millions of dollars. Researchers from the University of California began exploring this strange phenomenon. To investigate the whole story of the spam business, they launched their own spam company and sent spam for a month. The experiment showed that out of 12.5 million spam emails sent out, only one responds to the addressee.
In this paper, researchers used part of the largest network of Storm botnets, which has more than a million zombie PCs (mostly infected users' home computers). Scientists have created a network of proxy bots, through which they collected information about mailings. In reality, 75,869 zombie PCs were involved.
In total, two mailings were launched. As part of the first, a typical way of spreading viruses through spam was emulated, while another user was invited to visit a fake website selling medications that increase libido. The site was an exact copy of the same one that is actually advertised through Storm botnets, only through it you couldn’t really buy anything: the order button returned an error message.
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A total of 469 million spam messages were sent.
The bulk of the messages related to the "pharmaceutical" campaign. After 26 days of work and 350 million letters dispatched, only 28 “purchases” were recorded, the researchers report. Thus, the effectiveness of advertising amounted to a measly 0.000008%. By the way, this is thousands of orders of magnitude less than the 2.15% reported by analytical companies. However, even this is enough for profit.
Under the existing affiliate program, the total income from 28 orders is $ 2,731.88, that is, a little more than $ 100 per day for the study period.
If we proportionally project this amount on the entire network of Storm botnets, then we can assume that its owners earn about $ 7,000 per day, that is, more than $ 2 million per year.
via BBC
In this paper, researchers used part of the largest network of Storm botnets, which has more than a million zombie PCs (mostly infected users' home computers). Scientists have created a network of proxy bots, through which they collected information about mailings. In reality, 75,869 zombie PCs were involved.
In total, two mailings were launched. As part of the first, a typical way of spreading viruses through spam was emulated, while another user was invited to visit a fake website selling medications that increase libido. The site was an exact copy of the same one that is actually advertised through Storm botnets, only through it you couldn’t really buy anything: the order button returned an error message.
')
A total of 469 million spam messages were sent.
The bulk of the messages related to the "pharmaceutical" campaign. After 26 days of work and 350 million letters dispatched, only 28 “purchases” were recorded, the researchers report. Thus, the effectiveness of advertising amounted to a measly 0.000008%. By the way, this is thousands of orders of magnitude less than the 2.15% reported by analytical companies. However, even this is enough for profit.
Under the existing affiliate program, the total income from 28 orders is $ 2,731.88, that is, a little more than $ 100 per day for the study period.
If we proportionally project this amount on the entire network of Storm botnets, then we can assume that its owners earn about $ 7,000 per day, that is, more than $ 2 million per year.
via BBC
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/44353/
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