A True Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem? By Edward Falk. A common acronym in spam-fighting is FUSSP — Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem. It's used (usually derisively) to describe the latest proposed scheme to end spam once and for all. Usually these schemes are based on false assumptions or have already been tried with no results. This time — be still, my beating heart — it looks like some researchers at the University of California might really be on to something. According to the New York Times, researchers have discovered that 95% of drug and herbal remedy credit card transactions are handled through just three financial companies in Azerbaijan, Denmark and the West Indies. Presumably, if these companies could be persuaded to stop supporting spammers, then the money supply which drives spam would dry up, and the spammers would be forced to close shop. I've said before that spam exists because ISPs tolerate it. This seems to hold true for financial institutions as well. If the financial institutions stopped abetting spammers, the theory goes, then spam would be significantly curtailed. Of course, I don't have any illusions that this is the final solution to the spam problem. There will always be spam as the spammers find ways around the shut-down of their credit card processing suppliers. But as the shut-downs of major botnet command-and-contol centers in the past have shown, you can fight spam, if you're just willing to do it. Source: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20110520_a_true_final_ultimate_solution_to_the_spam_problem/
This is more than likely a significant source of those companies revenue which I'm sure they will not likely give up easily.
Well, the fact of this matter isn't that these merchants aren't supporting spammers, they're supporting the ADVERTISERS of the offers that the spammers are running. And most of the time, not 100% but a high percentage, they are not the same. By that I mean advertiser/spammer isn't the same company, most likely a partnership but seperate entities for sure. As you can see, the merchanting for this vertical is already off shore which means domestic merchants stopped processing these orders some time ago. This is because of the charge backs coming in which in a vertical such as this would be insanely high. Even running multiple merchants and cascading dozens if not 100's of MIDs and running with a solid charge back mitigation company wouldn't help much and eventually you'd lose the ability to process. So you go off shore. The down side for a lot would be the increased reserve or rolling reserve held by the merchant. The upside would be a higher percentage of accepted charge backs and the security of foreign banking. And depending on the volume the advertiser is running you can negotiate weekly pay outs by the merchant so it works out to the advertisers advantage even after all things are factored in. So until it seriously and negatively affects the advertisers....we'll all still get [email protected] offers for a long time. :thumpdown:
If anyone was really serious about killing it the federal government would demand that the credit card companies stopped processing for all these merchants just as they did with porn & gambling. For now, they obviously just don't give a shit.
Hmm, I guess they never considered why these companies would be working with merchants in such far flung countries did they...
