Ok, folks, here's something that I'm more puzzled by than I am by quantum physics and its infinitely-dimensional universe.

Does spam work? I mean, it must, to some extent, or else it wouldn't continue to be such a prolific advertising medium. But does anyone really buy stocks (let alone $$$$$$ or viagra or watches) based on spammed stock tips?

I understand about how cheap spam is, in terms of cost per advertising unit or whatever measure is used. But is it really effective enough to justify itself to people doing it?

What's the deal, anyway? HPH

Edit: I forgot. You need to remember the secret code for this. As a reminder, the $$$$$$ word ends in "ography."

 

Its not just those of us who are intellectually superior who use computers, so I guess it must work.

 

Polls show 5% of email users admit to answering at least one spam. That translates to about 6 million people.

Better bang for the buck than TV ads.

 

Hmm. Well, I'm not sure what constitutes an effective advertising technique (nor do I know what a typical spam costs).

But these statements imply that (1) there are about 120M email users. Now, I get somewhere in the vicinity of 50 spams a day, and have for at least 5 years (really). If those numbers apply to everyone, (2) that's well over 10 trillion spams in that time. Even if the "at least one" translates to 10, that's (3) a 1 in 182,000 hit rate or so ("hits" being responses, not necessarily purchases).

So maybe its actually a good advertising investment. Sheesh. HPH

 

According to AOL they blocked 2 billion spams in one day.

If you get fifty per day and I get about the same, you have to wonder what the total might be that doesn't get blocked and what's the impact of the traffic on the internet?

You're right, "Sheesh"

 

I don't know how it's done but a spammer can put a partial address in an e-mail and that e-mail will find everyone with some permutation of that address in an e-mail system. It really doesn't take very much effort for a spammer to send out a few hundred thousand pieces of spam. If only 1/2 of 1 percent gets answered, that a tremendous response. In addition, I am convinced that the people sending the spam are hiring many people to send it. I often receive the same piece of spam from 4 or 5 different senders the same day.

 

And a bunch of those will contain a nasty little worm attached to try and get your machine to be a spammer too.

Double Sheesh.

 

I thought this was about SPAM SPAM.

Q:
What the heck is in SPAM anyway?

A:
Pork shoulder and ham, mostly. And spices. Secret spices.

and more;

SPAM and the Internet

You've probably seen, heard or even used the term "spamming" to refer to the act of sending unsolicited commercial email (UCE), or "spam" to refer to the UCE itself. Following is our position on the relationship between UCE and our trademark SPAM.

Use of the term "spam" was adopted as a result of the Monty Python skit in which our SPAM meat product was featured. In this skit, a group of Vikings sang a chorus of "spam, spam, spam . . . " in an increasing crescendo, drowning out other conversation. Hence, the analogy applied because UCE was drowning out normal discourse on the Internet.

We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of the word "spam" as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.

 

It works.

 

If anybody is interested in how they can take over your machine, check out this guy.

http://www.grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm

He suffered a DOS attack and in his investigation he describes how they do it. Interesting if you're into that kind of stuff.