Word: spammers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...approved diet pills! Viagra without a prescription! Instant access to XXX movies! Dramatically enhanced orgasms! If you have ever received e-mails advertising products and services like these--some quite within the law, some clearly outside it--chances are they came from a guy like Howard Carmack, professional spammer...
...unit, workers like Anna Ford scan screens that show blocks of mail entering the system. She's looking, Matrix-like, for suspicious patterns. "Here's someone sending 50 e-mails to 3,000 recipients," says Ford. "That stinks." With one click, the sender is identified as a China-based spammer; with another, he is banished from the system. Is there room for human error? Possibly--but letting such high-volume users through, says AOL antispam manager Charles Stiles, "would be like a bank welcoming customers in ski masks...
...spammers flood the Internet with ads nobody wants to read? Because some people do read them, and a tiny fraction actually respond--which in the world of direct marketing is like money in the e-bank. Take former spammer Scott Hirsch of Boca Raton, Fla., who sold his e-mail marketing business last year for $135 million and retired at the age of 37. Florida is home to more spammers than any other state, and Hirsch--who started his first bulk e-mail list way back in 1996--likes to take credit for helping make Boca Raton "the spam capital...