Contact - An Element Common to All Spam

In the early days of spam, messages commonly contain a phone number that the spammer would try to get the recipient to call and leave a message. Maintaining a 1-800 number and checking the messages was fairly effort intensive. The intent was usually to scam a few suckers out of relatively large sums of money.

Using 1-800 numbers posed a number of problems for spammers. For one, irate recipients would repeatedly call the number, trying to run up their expenses. Some users would also leave long rambling messages, only to leave a false call back number.

".....I'm very interested in your system of making money. Please call me back at 1-421-531-421... 522. Once again, my phone number is 1-421-531-412... 512"

In the late 90's, the cost of web hosting dropped dramatically. With falling bandwidth costs, the cost of setting up a dedicated website for a spam campaign became tiny compared with the expense involved with a 1-800 number. This let senders of spam messages direct recipients right into their ecommerce systems.

Today, almost all spam contains a URL pointing to the spammer's website. This is a major aid to anti-spam filter software like SpamButcher. While it's not practical to filter out any message with a URL, the fact that a message contains one or more can be a significant hint that it could be spam.

In the last few months another contact method has popped up. Some spammers are directing users toward instant messenger addresses. The messenger addresses are usually monitored by "robots" as opposed to people. These robots respond to users automatically with the spammer's actual website when sent a message. This method allows spammers to not include URL's in the their messages, making it tougher to block junk mail from them.

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