A group of computer scientists from UC Berkeley and UC San Diego spent a month earlier this year infiltrating a spammer network and studying its operations. The scientists mimicked the methodologies of the spammers by hijacking computers and using them to send out emails soliciting orders for pharmaceutical products. In 26 days, almost 350 million pieces of spam were sent out resulting in only 28 sales — a response of 0.00001% — that netted $2,731.88 in revenue. Extrapolating their data, the researchers estimates the real spammers can make up to $2 million a year with billions of emails. Since they're riding on other people's computing power and bandwidth, they can still make a profit. [BBC]