[thelist] The War on Sp*m

Jeniffer C. Johnson lead at offlead.com
Wed Apr 14 14:25:12 CDT 2004


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Monique Angelich [mailto:listmail at devedia.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 1:25 PM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] The War on Sp*m
> 
> All in all, I don't think this is a war we can win, unless we put a
> financial burden on the companies who pay to have the spam sent out! Where
> there is money to be made there will be a service, but why not fine the
> businesses who are trying to make a profit this way?


This actually is a question I've had for a long time now. Who in the ever
lovin' hell actually BUYS something they get in spam mail??? Honestly! I
mean, I realize that people (and I use that term loosely) send spam out
because they somehow are making money off of it. If they weren't making
money, somehow, then they wouldn't keep doing it. My question is HOW are
they making money? I can only guess that someone, somewhere, actually falls
for this crap and buys this stuff. I want to know who this is. I think these
people should perhaps also receive some sort of penalty for being too stupid
to use the internet, and for being part of this obviously growing problem.

(Okay, I'm only partly serious about the above statement, but I still would
like to know who it is that buys something based on spam they get into their
inbox. I'd like to have a long talk with a few of them.)

I mean, I get some stuff that I can clearly see is somewhat valid, if
sometimes annoying, marketing email. I myself get a lot of dog-related spam,
for bargains and sales of various dog supplies and food. This mail
originates from my membership for many years on various dog forums and
lists, and because I run a website for dog topics. While I'm not buying any
of this stuff, I do at least know why I'm getting it. The _REALLY_ annoying
spam is the stuff that comes in for all the prescription drugs, and the
pornography stuff. For the last few weeks I've been getting a lot more of
two specific spams (on the order of 30 - 50 an hour) for prescription drugs.
Starting last night I started getting another new one about hangover drugs.
*rolling eyes* And most of these are not addressed to me, but to random
non-existent addresses on my server. (Which is another question...how much
response do they actually get from sending spam to a random string of
letters @ some domain??) I'm changing settings to start bouncing this chunk
of the problem, but I'm still annoyed that it's a problem at all.  

Jeniffer C. Johnson
OffLead Productions
http://www.offlead.com





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