Meet The Kings Of Spam www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/08/05/tech/main517505.shtml

(AP) Tom Cowles, who heads one of the world's largest bulk email, or spam, businesses, ought to be a happy guy.

By his account, his company makes $12 million a year e-mailing billions of advertisements, mainly to folks who don't want them.  It's an easy job, the way Cowles and others describe it:

"You get hired by a client who wants to sell a penile enlarger or an antenna booster. You write a zesty sales pitch....

...Then, with the help of some cloak-and-dagger software
and a massive database of e-mail addresses, you deluge
the planet. If one in a thousand recipients buys it, you're rich."

Who Sends Out Spam?

There are different groups of people that send unsolicited commercial email (spam). Some don't provide a real existing email address and a forged one with no opt-out removed from future mailings--because they don't want to receive zillions of complaints. sent to them.

The worse types are the ones that uses someone email address causing the ISP to shut down owner of that email address and receiving tons of "hate mail".

The lost "poor soul" are the ones' who isn't aware of the conventions of the web, buys a disk with millions of names and starts their own advertising campaign. These people are identifiable and will be shut down in a matter of hours and learned their first lesson--in the "school of hard knocks"...

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