CompuWorld

I know that most of you delete those spam messages which ask you to buy "Viagra" for a discounted price. But there are many who don't! And this is enough to make the spam industry give huge profits. Ed-- who does not reveal his full name but sometimes goes by SpammerX-- says he pulled in US$10,000 to $15,000 a week from email spamming. And here are we the bloggers working hard to find unique content to drive visitors and earn some money by ad clicks. But as everyone knows the wrong path to success is always the most profitable one.

He spent 10 hours a day, seven days a week studying how to send spam and avoid filtering technologies in security software designed to weed out garbage e-mail. Most spam filters are effective 99 percent of the time; he aimed for that remaining window, using tricks such as including slightly different images in his spam, which can fool filters into thinking the e-mail is legitimate.

To track the money, merchants set up a "referral sales page" where spammers can see how much they make from a spam run. Ed would log in frequently, watching the money increase. He was paid into electronic payment transfer accounts, such as e-gold or PayPal, or into his debit card account, which he could cash out in $20 bills.

That became problematic when the cash became voluminous. He says he made $480,000 his last year of spamming. But the lifestyle of being a spammer was taking a toll. In essence, he had no life. And that is true too. Imagine what a spammer will tell his girlfriend about his profession. That he sells Viagra by fooling people?

So Ed got out of the business. He's written a book, "Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side," which he said has had some take-up in law enforcement circles eager to learn more about the spam business, which he projects will only get worse.