Blue Security, Again

I'd posted here earlier about Blue Security's opt-out list for spam.

Recently, Blue Security was the target of a denial of service attack, allegedly by a spammer who decided that Blue Security was too dangerous to continue its opt-out list. There's been a fair amount of controversy about the incident, some of it targeted at Blue Security for what seemed to be poor handling of the attack itself.

I won't get into the details, because I haven't done enough research to know what actually happened. But, I think it's worth looking at the logic of the situation. The spammer responsible obviously sees Blue Security as cutting into his business. So he decides to attack Blue Security, and as a sideline also start a spam campaign targeting Blue Security's customers.

First off, who actually clicks on spam and buys anything? Nobody who subscribes to Blue Security would do so. And anyone who would isn't going to mind getting spam. So the logic of Blue Security cutting into a spammer's business is a bit dodgy. If anything, Blue Security is helping spammers to clean their lists so each email on the list represents a better candidate for their products. Not that that means much to an email spammer, since the cost of sending a single email is negligible.

Second, what's the likely result of sending even more spam out to the world? It seems like it would draw more attention on the problem of spam, and prompt more action against spam.

The logic all around seems to be a bit flawed, which might make me wonder if there isn't something more going on, except for the fact that most of what you hear in the news seems to be based on flawed logic. It's certainly possible this is all some ploy by Blue Security to raise interest in their opt-out list, but unless they're about to go public with stock, I don't see the point.

I guess it's just a crazy world.