International Spam

Recently a summary of an article regarding the impact of spam on second and third-world nations was published on this site. The tone of the article was that developing countries were getting hit harder by spam due to the fact they lack some of the information technology resources to deal with it. This can either be in the form of commercial spam utilities, or technical expertise deploying open-source solutions.

Let's flip it around for a second. A good chunk of spam is actually originating from the second world. Presumably that means people there are profiting from it.

Russia and Korea (south more than north) are both hotbeds of spam activity. A lot of the goods being pitched from those locations are gray-market at best. Pirated software seems to be the hot-ticket.

To adopt a "progressive" spin - this can be seen as just the little guy taking a few bucks from the big guy. I'm not actually arguing this, but I could imagine others doing so.

A more extreme case is when spam actually attempts to perpetuate fraud. A measurable portion of Nigeria's economy is actually based on 419 scams. In this case, money is literally taken out of one country's economy and transferred directly into the other without any goods involved. This is another way of saying it's theft. The best way to protect yourself from these kinds of messages is by deploying a spam solution application.

On the flip side, this kind of activity severely tarnishes the reputation of countries were such scams are common. Would you ever purchase something online from Russia, Korea or Nigeria?

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