Related link: http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2005/03/internet_axis_o.html
Here is a fun blog entry, summarizing what this venture capitalist considers to be ‘Internet Axis of Evil’:
- Spam and Viruses
- Adware/Spyware
- Comment Spam/Link Spam
- DNS Hacking
- Phishing
What do they all have in common? Well, for one he says that ‘there is money to be made in each of them’. Great! Also, it seems that most of the entries appear to affect consumers/end users rather than businesses (at least, not directly) and that seems to contradict the above. Interesting!
money
The money is in all cases to be made both by perpatrating the acts and by selling tools to prevent/circumvent/detect them.
Consumers are the most obvious direct targets for all, but businesses also suffer.
For example:
Each PayPal scam/phishing scheme damages the credibility of PayPal which hurts their business. It also means they need to invest ever more in order to detect such things.
Another example:
Spam can take on such proportions that a company may need to buy hardware, extra bandwidth, and even hire extra staff for the sole purpose of handling it all.
In both cases there could be money in it for a specialist company offering their services to the victim. Of course such a company would exist only by the existence of the problem and might themselves become suspected of perpatrating the act in order to attract customers...