Does spam even work

[Khalil]

for those idiots who spam crap all day long to people's emails? I have yet to open a spam mail and go oh my god I have to have that.
I am guessing it must work or it would have stopped by now, there must be some morons out there who actually fall for the spam mail advertising.

gmail so far in my opinion is the best at filtering all that garbage.

[vtfanmv5]

The amount of incredibly stupid people in this country (and others, I'm sure) is amazing. I'm sure plenty of people click it.

[doubledragon5]

I have had maybe 2 pieces of spam mail, in my livemail account in now going on 1yr..

[David M]

Spam works by pure volume. You can bet there is at least one person per million that actually thinks the product is not a scam and would be useful to them.

Send out 100 million spam's and sell 100 boxes of sugar pills that enlarge your private parts. At $29.95 a box you have made yourself $2995 minus the cost of some really cheap materials and shipping.

[Force Flow]

Saw this pop up the the tech news headlines recently

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009...pam-e-mail.ars

[Khalil]

from the article force linked Slightly less than half (48 percent) said that they have never clicked on a spam e-mail. That's the good news, but that means the other half have clicked on or responded to spam.

LMAO that is a lot of morons out there.

[Force Flow]

I think they may also be including phishing attempts...I've seen a few that have been very clever and official looking that would probably fool the average joe.

[Strider]

What I can't stand is if you go to a legit website for a product your are interested and go to buy it, you sometimes get those annoying boxes where you have to make sure they're unchecked. For example, will you allows us to give info to 3rd party developers? The problem I have with that is, I bought your product without any spam why are you trying to give me some? Sometimes I feel like canceling my order and giving them the reason why I canceled. However, a lot of times the item is either unique or something I really want and know to be of good quality. I just don't understand these companies way of thinking.

[XenaWP]

Originally Posted by Khalil for those idiots who spam crap all day long to people's emails? I have yet to open a spam mail and go oh my god I have to have that. I am guessing it must work or it would have stopped by now, there must be some morons out there who actually fall for the spam mail advertising. gmail so far in my opinion is the best at filtering all that garbage.

Your compassion is underwhelming.

Old people are frequently the victims. Are they morons because they don't know better?

[Khalil]

Originally Posted by XenaWP Your compassion is underwhelming. Old people are frequently the victims. Are they morons because they don't know better?

The old people excuse is lame and unacceptable in my book. My mother is 73 years old and she would never fall for crap like this.
If you are a moron when you are young you will more than likely be a moron when you get old.
If it was not for morons most scams would not work, regardless of age!

[pam123]

Originally Posted by Khalil The old people excuse is lame and unacceptable in my book. My mother is 73 years old and she would never fall for crap like this. If you are a moron when you are young you will more than likely be a moron when you get old. If it was not for morons most scams would not work, regardless of age!

At 73 no, another 5/10 years then yes.

I've got some clients who were able to spot spam/scam a few years ago but can't do it now ( And their kids are going crazy.).

A lot of this is pointed at seniors ( I'm blessing the fact that I set up so many accounts with seniors as "guest" . ) They don't "get it" any longer; they really can't tell.

It's an extension of mail and telephone scammers, they target the seniors with a series of probes, and move in on the mentally failing ones.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that your senior just "stumbled" over this; it was deliberatlely sent/set-up, to steal from someone like him.


I used to think that seniors on line was a great idea but now I'm having second thoughts.

[Khalil]

Originally Posted by pam123 At 73 no, another 5/10 years then yes. I've got some clients who were able to spot spam/scam a few years ago but can't do it now ( And their kids are going crazy.). A lot of this is pointed at seniors ( I'm blessing the fact that I set up so many accounts with seniors as "guest" . ) They don't "get it" any longer; they really can't tell. It's an extension of mail and telephone scammers, they target the seniors with a series of probes, and move in on the mentally failing ones. Don't make the mistake of thinking that your senior just "stumbled" over this; it was deliberatlely sent/set-up, to steal from someone like him. I used to think that seniors on line was a great idea but now I'm having second thoughts.

If someone is at that level of incompetency then someone should be takking care of them and doing what you did to help the seniors.
People sign bad contracts all the time and the courts hold them to these contracts, it happened to one of my best friends when his father passed away. He was a total moron for signing a blank contract and I told him so, he went to court to fight it, the judge asked him one question, is this your signature, my friend said yes, the judge nailed him for 14k.

[HAL9000]

OMG... SPAM!.... A little background here... I'm playing a cheezy little online game and in the game you need cash... three ways to get it... one..do repetitive menial tasks in the game for little payout, takes a long time... two... actually buy the cash... give them your credit card number and buy as much as you want... very fast, but I'm sorry, not exchanging real cash for play cash... then third...

ONLINE OFFERS!!! LOL..

Let me start by stating... no, I did NOT enter my regular e-mail address... I made one up through my domain to forward to my e-mail... I WILL be deleting this bogus address. So now it's on to the offers... The deal is I will receive the "cash" 15 minutes after signing up and verifying information. Well... I'm a clicking here, I'm a clicking there, a click click here and a click click there, fill in some bogus personal information blah blah blah and old McDonald has some spam... E I E I OHHHHHH! I don't think you ever really get to the "end" of these "offers".... it just goes on and on forever... well, my spam box now has over 500 e-mails and is growing by the second... sure hope I get my play cash.

[David M]

Seniors are more prone to scams because the culture has changed from when they were young. Societal decay allows thieves to market themselves right out in the open now without any sort of social stigma or any sort of organization or law enforcement agency to shut them down. Crime in fact is glorified in our society now..look at much of rap music where those who predate upon the weak are sometimes seen as heroes of sorts.

The scams now are much more sophisticated with much more clever way of fooling people. Again, very little of it gets shut down by law enforcement agencies. On the internet you can say to or try or steal from pretty much anyone you want, with little to no consequences. The old media used to stop much of that. This is all a huge societal change.

[XenaWP]

Originally Posted by Khalil The old people excuse is lame and unacceptable in my book. My mother is 73 years old and she would never fall for crap like this. If you are a moron when you are young you will more than likely be a moron when you get old. If it was not for morons most scams would not work, regardless of age!

Wow. Just. Wow.

[nokiafan05]

Originally Posted by Khalil for those idiots who spam crap all day long to people's emails? I have yet to open a spam mail and go oh my god I have to have that. I am guessing it must work or it would have stopped by now, there must be some morons out there who actually fall for the spam mail advertising. gmail so far in my opinion is the best at filtering all that garbage.

you would be amazed at how many stupid people there actually is.

[Hi Ho]

Much of the spam today is there to get people to go to a maliciously crafted website in hopes of exploiting a security flaw and adding the PC to a bot net. Phising is on the rise as well. Spammers make more money with those tactics as opposed to trying to sell pills.

I get maybe a couple spam messages a week in my junk folder (none in my inbox) on my Live Hotmail mail account which I have had for over 10 years.