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Spam culture, part 2: Russia
6 comments- TAGS:amirseries-spamculture, culture, e-mail, email, Russia, Russian, spam, spammer, spammers
- IT TOPICS:Cybercrime & Hacking, Enterprise Software & Services, Government & Regulation, Internet, Security, Security Hardware & Software
This week on Security Levity... the second in a series of posts about spam in different cultures. This time: how Russia views spam.
As we saw when we looked at China, it's no surprise that Russian culture is very different from that in the West, whether in North America or western Europe. Spam is just one example of these huge differences.
Many business people in Russia see it 
as their inalienable right to send unsolicited email, perhaps even more so than in China. Since the fall of the USSR, Russia has taken capitalism to its limits; it practices business initiatives to their fullest force. This can sometimes be based on a highly stereotypical understanding of western business culture. They have been led to believe that this is what "capitalism" is; that in the West, all businesses spam and they all work to low moral standards.
In many ways, Russia lost its entrepreneurial business culture during the days of communism. When democracy and capitalism came to Russia, what filled the cultural void were the dubious morals of those that survived despite communism's tight grip on entrepreneurship. In other words, organized criminals and other shady operators grew up into businesspeople.
In contrast to most other parts of the world, the spam ecosystem is more vertically integrated in Russia. In other words, the spammers are often part of the same organization as those running the spam-sending botnets, and those hosting the spamvertised Web sites. Whereas in other places, those roles are usually separate: it's more common for spammers to contract with other gangs who run the botnets and provide the spam-sending services and separately with those who provide Web hosting.
Spam-sending services are far more easily accessible to Russian businesses than they are in the West. One result is a serious lack of targeting: Russian spam is being sent to millions of recipients that couldn't possibly be part of the business' target market. The messages are in Russian and often promote local products and services, yet are being distributed worldwide.
These phenomena aren't, strictly speaking, unique to Russia. Some other former Soviet Union (FSU) countries have a similar experience. But the FSU isn't a single, homogeneous melting pot, any more than the U.S. or Europe are. So we should take care not to characterize all these countries as spam-friendly.
This has been the second in a series of posts about how different cultures view spam. Let me know if there are other parts of the world that you're interested in.
I want to make this an interactive place: where I can answer questions and cover topics that you suggest. Feel free to add comments and ask Amir!
When he's not watching From Russia With Love, Amir Lev is the CTO, President, and co-founder of Commtouch (NASDAQ:CTCH), an e-mail and Web defense technology provider. MORE...
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