Laura Betterly defends her career as a stay-at-home spammer.

What exactly does a spammer look like? It's easy to imagine a nameless, concrete-enclosed corporation spitting out anonymous bulk Viagra ads from a smoke-filled, Satanic server farm. Spam is evil (everyone can agree on that, right?), so its senders must be soulless parasites, scamming and sapping the life out of innocent emailers.
Then how do you explain Laura Betterly? Betterly is a 41-year-old stay-at-home single mom who claims that her small-time spam operation -- Data Resource Consulting -- is the best way for her to make a living while spending quality time with her two boys, 10-year-old Chris and 11-year-old Craig.
Betterly will appear on Tuesday's episode of "The Screen Savers" to defend her career as a stay-at-home spammer. Listen to her story and post your responses in the Talkback section below.
Two sides to every spammer
In this Wall Street Journal article, Betterly insists that she's "just trying to make a living like everyone else." Call her a "spam queen," she doesn't care. "As long as I'm not breaking any laws," Betterly says, "you don't have to love me or like what I do for a living."
Before you dismiss Betterly as a high tech lowlife, take a look at this spammer pro/con list we whipped up from facts culled from Betterly's Wall Street Journal profile.
Spammer pros
  • By staying at home, Betterly can responsibly raise her children and save money on child care.
  • Betterly and three friends started Data Resource Consulting with a $15,000 investment. Her projected income for this year is $200,000.
  • Bulk email pays well for an extremely small return rate. If Betterly receives responses from 0.001 percent of her mailing list, she can still break even.
  • Betterly isn't breaking the law. Her home state of Florida doesn't have strict anti-spam statutes, unlike 26 other states.
  • She doesn't send porn spam, because she believes it "degrades society."
  • She sends messages only to people who have expressed an interest in the products or services through other websites.

Spammer cons
  • Betterly's company, Data Resource Consulting, sends as many as 60 million spam email messages a month.
  • Anti-spam service Brightmail estimates that 36 percent of all email in August 2002 was spam, as opposed to only 8 percent in August 2001.
  • Betterly insists she only sends messages to people who have expressed an interest in her products, but some (if not most) of her recipients likely signed up inadvertently. When registering for a website, some sites ask you to check boxes indicating your interests. In the fine print there's often a second box that asks you if you want to receive offers for related products. Many sites require you to "opt out" of these email messages by unchecking the box. Many people overlook this and fall victim to spam.
  • Betterly sells whatever information she receives from her bulk email messages to another, larger spammer called wfsDirect. The spam chain continues.


Stop spam
For users frustrated with spam, Betterly suggests logging onto the Do Not Email List.

What's your verdict?
Is Betterly making an honest buck? Should small-time spam operations be shut down? Is Betterly's spam career any worse than billboard, TV, radio, and Internet advertising? Would you consider becoming a stay-at-home spammer? Post your opinions in the Talkback section and let us know how you really feel.

Take today's online poll: Is it spam if you say OK?