On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 16:55:38 -0600, MattB
wrote:

It must work on someone or they would just dry up for lack of business.
I'm amazed when I think about that. Even if it was something I really
wanted, I would not respond to spam (in a serious way) for anything. I'd
try to buy from a non-spamming competitor.

The economies of scale for spamming are unlike any other advertising
method. Because the sender bears virtually none of the cost of
delivery (and the recipient bears *more* in virtually all cases),
spammers can afford to send literally millions of spam emails per day.
Some send millions *per hour*. If they get a response rate in the
range of one thousandth of a percent, they may still make money.

Of course, there are multiple reasons not to buy from a spammer.
First and most important, spamming is itself theft; it makes
unauthorized use of computer time and resources, without
authorization, to deliver the spam. Buying from a spammer is
supporting that theft. Second, spammers are not a reputable source
for *anything*; there are ample documented instances of spammers
taking their victims money and delivering *nothing*, and even more
documented cases of their delivering a worthless or even dangerous
product. And then there are the spammers who sell pirated software,
the ones who are running identity theft scams, etc.

"Never buy anything from a spammer" is the only safe policy.

I'll be one happy guy when the big hand starts to slap these guys. What a
waste of oxygen.


I'm not holding my breath. Most of these come from places where the
authorities have much bigger fish to fry.

It's not that the authorities have bigger fish to fry in many cases,
it's that the authorities don't give a rat's ass about the spamming
because it's only ripping off people in *other countries*. Take the
Chinese hosting services for the blue-pill spammers, for example. The
Chinese are *producing* the bogus pills that the spammers are selling
to gullible Americans, and what the spammers are doing is *legal*
under Chinese law because all of the violations occur outside China.
They have no reason to interfere, and a strong economic disincentive
to do anything but *protect* the spammers.

I could go on and on about why the problem is as bad as it is...but
that's way OT for this forum.
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