Is spam futile?

[Dog Pants]

While deleting the latest spammer I started to wonder why they persist. Does anyone ever actually buy anything from them? I certainly never have, but maybe I'm not in such a majority as I presumed. So, have any of you guys ever bought anything from a spammer, or know anybody who has? There must be a reason for their continued existance.

[fabyak]

I never have, but I know there is a frightening amount of people who do. Something like 1 in 10 people (or maybe more)

You need to use something like PureMessage by Sophos to get rid of all your spammings

/shameless product whoring

[Grimmie]

I can only think that they prey on those with the lowest self esteem and those with social and physical problems, so mostly the people that check their emails all day or lurk on forums permenantly. Those are stereotypically at least the sort of people that would most likely purchase virility drugs, or would need quick financing™ to pay off their debts. These kind of people, or so the theory goes, would be easily pushed into quick frivilous purchases that often promise to fix all their problems instantly.

I think.

[Dog Pants]

I can only think that they prey on those with the lowest self esteem and those with social and physical problems, so mostly the people that check their emails all day or lurk on forums permenantly.

Eek! No wonder they target 5punk!

/hides

[Joose]

I honestly dont know anyone who even reads them, other than for comedy purposes.

That said, my dad has repeatedly fallen foul of those adverts that look like error messages. If an otherwise fairly smart person can be silly enough for that, im sure theres people out there stupid enough to think that the shite people peddle via spam is worth buying.

[Lee]

That said, my dad has repeatedly fallen foul of those adverts that look like error messages.

Haha, my Dad does the same thing, I cant count the number of times he's called me into the room to ask about an "error".

[Fear]

Whilst their aim is to sell you their vi4gra, they are also concerned with search engines pimping their stuff. By spreading their URL across the interweb they get a high page rank and I assume more sales. So some news report told me once anyway. So it is more about page rank than direct sales.

[deject]

I read a lot of spam to compile this: http://www.apathymachine.com/spam_poetry.txt

taken from untold numbers of spam because I started noticing some of the humorous or just plain bizzare passages used to try and defeat spam filters

[cashy]

Whilst their aim is to sell you their vi4gra, they are also concerned with search engines pimping their stuff. By spreading their URL across the interweb they get a high page rank and I assume more sales. So some news report told me once anyway. So it is more about page rank than direct sales.

thats some clever shit yo. i never thought of that before

[Guybrush]

Well as they use zombie pc's to send it all there's no cost to send 1 million spams - only takes one person t buy to make a profit