Phishing Is a Minimum-Wage Job 224
rohitm918 writes "A study by Microsoft Research concludes that phishers make very little (PDF): '...low-skill jobs pay like low-skill jobs, whether the activity is legal or not.' They also find that the Gartner numbers that everyone quotes ($3.2B/year etc) are rubbish, off by a factor of 50. 'Even though it harvests "free money," phishing generates total revenue equal to the total costs incurred by the actors. Each participant earns, on average, only as much as he would have made in the opportunities he gave up elsewhere. As the total phishing effort increases the total phishing revenue declines: the harder individual phishers try the worse their collective situation gets. As a consequence, increasing effort is a sign of failure rather than of success.'"
Yeah, Right... (Score:2, Insightful)
Phishers don't make squat. Right. Because obviously it's not as profitable as working at the local oil change shop, or at Wally World.
I'd like to see 419 examples of how Nigerian scammers don't make money.
Economically rational, isn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have the choice:
1. earn minimum wage at McDonalds
2. earn less than minimum wage selling drugs
Which do you choose? Selling drugs of course. Why? Cause you've got respect for yourself and refuse to work a demeaning job.
Before you object, whether or not you agree that working at McDonalds is demeaning is irrelevant. Many, many, many women have been given the choice:
1. work as a stripper
2. work as a waitress
and decided that working as a waitress is less demeaning than working as a stripper. You may disagree with that, also but that's also irrelevant. The facts are that you can make a lot more money working as a stripper than as a waitress, and yet so many people choose not to.
The economically rational human is a myth.
Like drug dealing (Score:3, Insightful)
They'd do better with a real job.
Re:Economically rational, isn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a question of most women not wanting to work as strippers, it's a simple fact that most women could never make a living as a stripper. The majority of people (both men and women) do not look all that good naked.
Re:Economically rational, isn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hehe.. why do you think women get paid more to be strippers than to be waitresses? There already is a market for lost self-respect. People choose not to participate in it.
Re:Not really all that big a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Very true, I know a guy who sells pot. He is always bragging about how much money he makes
If he's selling drugs (even something as harmless as pot) while running around town bragging about it, he's likely to discover that his cost of doing business [wikipedia.org] will be going up soon.....
I'm not a big fan of a war on drugs but I don't have much sympathy for someone that mind numbingly stupid either. I always used to suspect that a friend of mine had a grow-operation going on -- but I never asked and she never told. If you are going to get involved in anything like that the first rule you learn is to keep your fucking mouth shut.
Re:Economically rational, isn't. (Score:2, Insightful)
Then those people are not presented with that opportunity. Thanks for finding something else irrelevant. You can always rely on Slashdot.
Re:Economically rational, isn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
he majority of people (both men and women) do not look all that good naked.
The majority of strippers don't look all that good naked either ;) The novelty of the experience combined with low lightning and alcohol is usually enough to make up for this however.....
Re:Like drug dealing (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course they would. But then again, they'd probably have to lay off the pot or crack in order to do so.
Re:Economically rational, isn't. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not really all that big a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't have the balls to get into dealing. The risk to reward ratio just isn't there for pot and I don't believe in any of the harder stuff.
On the other hand, the risk seems pretty low. Most pot dealers don't stand on a streetcorner, and many don't even advertise. Business is all word of mouth, and most customers repeat once a month or more -- nice and predictable income. Maybe every once in a while a dealer will try to up-sell a customer some mushrooms, but that's about it. Overall, selling pot seems like a much less risky business proposition than opening a coffee shop.
Or they just value it higher (Score:3, Insightful)
Every person places a different value on the same thing. If the difference in pay in X dollars per week, and girl A values her self-respect at X + 100 dollars, it would be irrational for her to strip instead of waiting tables (assuming other values are the same). If girl B values it at X - 200 dollars a week, it wouldn't make sense for her not to strip.
Just because you would make a choice differently doesn't mean they're not participating in the choice.
Re:Economically rational, isn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Have sex with men for money and get another job to supplement that income. (This can include stripper or waitress)
2. Not have sex with men for money and get a job to supply their income.
The vast majority of women choose to have sex with men for cash, goods and/or services. Almost all of them know what they are doing, but there are FAR greater profit for the whole group if this is denied. The stripper is simply a little more honest about her business.
While some will take offense at that, there really is no reason. There are very good biological reasons for how our culture came to have prostitution as a common activity, and very good cultural reasons that it become something that was taboo to speak of. Irrelevant to that, comparing waitresses to strippers is a waste of time if you don't take into account which of them are hookers and which ones are not.
Irrational expepctation (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance, some football players make a lot of money, so families, schools, colleges spend huge amounts of money to get people a position where they can make this money. In fact, even if one only considers colleges that are regularly recruited, the expectation value of income for these players are minimum wage. Of course, they can make money if they have others degress or skills, but the expectation if the rely on the game is very small.
As mentioned, many people prefer a small income with criminal activity rather than an honest, if perhaps uncomfortable job. People also prefer jobs they think they can have fun with to jobs where they actually have to put a honest days work.
We see this with the Madoff case, where it is better to be rich and work at a dishonorable profession than honorable and not so well off. Why would Madoff, or his criminal kids, be more respected than a person who is on time and does a good job at McDonalds?
Opportunities Elsewhere (Score:3, Insightful)
This is speculation, but my (big fat) gut tells me that while this might be true in general, there's probably at least one person at the top of a major phishing scheme making decent money.
Sure, the peons (as in any industry) who do the actual labor get paid crud, my guess is that Upper Management does just fine. Sure, unskilled labor gets the market rate for such.
Re:Minimum wage in the US (Score:2, Insightful)
I know you're trying to be funny, but logic dictates the exact opposite. Assuming that phishers would rather do ordinary work if it pays better, then the higher the minimum wage, then the number of phishers would be reduced until the amount received from phishing increases above the minimum wage.
Eliminating the minimum wage does the opposite - the number of phishers would increase until the return is reduced to such a level that they can't eat. At some point the amount of new phishers entering the phishing industry balances out with the number of phishers dying from starvation and you achieve equilibrium.
So there you have it - the higher the minimum wage, the lower the phishing; and conversely the lower the minimum wage, the higher the phishing. QED. :-)