spam...who is responding to it?

[dirtylibrarian]

I've long been fascinated by the sort of strange, and occasionally poetic (The Tornado Boys of 33) stuff that ends up in my junk mail folder. And you get used to over time. But that doesn't make it any less disturbing to get an email from "Grandma" with the subject line "GetNasty". No thanks, Grandma!

I'm very curious to know what the returns are on spam. I have trouble believing that it is worth anyone's effort to send it. But maybe I'm overestimating the average internet user's intelligence? I am an optimist after all.

Comments

Off topic (mostly)

[rebellibrarian.livejournal.com]

LOL, last night on the radio Jackie Martline was doing stand up - a series of BAD dirty jokes - when he came out with this one...

What's worse than nailing your Grandma?






Hitting your head on the coffin.

So bad... but I couldn't help giggling.

As for the returns, it *has* to be worth it for them to continue to do it... I'd think that it's a pretty low-cost method of reaching people. You do the same one ad you'd do for a select audience & it gets sent to so many more than they'd reach otherwise. If even half a percent go clicky, that's a lot of people.

[jillbertini.livejournal.com]

I wonder the same thing about telemarketers. Do you know anyone who buys anything from them?

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I read something in Salon a couple years ago, where their reporter attempted to answer spam. She couldn't, because the accounts were closed and banned by the time she clicked reply. I think their conclusion was that the only people making money from spam are the people selling the spam email lists.