3 financial companies control most spam-prompted card payments
(NEWSER) - Researchers in California think they’ve found spammers’ weak point—and say it could be used to help kill off the industry. To make their discovery, the researchers spent months trying to attract all the spam they could before buying thousands of dollars worth of products advertised in those emails. In the process, they learned that just three financial companies authorized 95% of credit card transactions. If those firms stopped OKing such payments, “you’d cut off the money that supports the entire spam enterprise,” a researcher tells the New York Times . More»