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Spam won't go away until they replace SMTP (the mail protocol) with something a little more secure and less easily spoofed. Right now it is too easy to hide behind open relays, faked headers, and freebie redirection services so that the actual sending cannot be found.
Tommy, there are a couple of spammers (like Alan Ralsky) who claim to be making really big dollars. They are running anywhere between 5 and 20 campaigns per day, sending tens of millions of emails per day. Even a low return rate is profitable. However, as companies like AOL, MSN, and Earthlink work to block out more spam, it makes it harder for these people to make money. Over time, the return per email sent is dropping.
More importantly, there is a serious lack of new product for them to promote, so all you are seeing now is an endless parade of penis patches, diet drugs, and model RC cars. That also leads to fewer and fewer buyers per email sent. This will cotninue to lower the value of spam as a marketing tool.
I was hoping that the spam law was going to work to punish the beneficiaries of the spam (the programs that actually process for these spammers) and stop the demand for spam.
Alex
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