Junk mail - beat this!

[neilrr]

Several years ago I made the mistake of putting my email address on an ad on one of the free car ads sites. A few days later junk mail started to arrive & keot coming in ever increasing quantities until I pretty much abandon that address.

A week or so ago someone posted a question about junk mail filters so I decided to take a weekly count on the junk mail in the old box.

614 junk emails in 7 days.

None opened, now all binned. Why do they send this crap out? Does anybody ever read them or respond?

 

[guydewdney]

I get that a day mate.....


what I dont understand is why they title it somthing so obviously spam-like - like "from nnnnniiiiieeeelllllrrr98348793895r78439 " subject "ciiiiiaaaaa@@@@lll1111iisss5555 4for freeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

and its just a load of cr@p in the body - one i get at the moment that gets past the spam filter, has nothing in it - no html, email addresses, just a bunch of plain text that goes on about some brilliant investment i should be making... Their system can be logging its been downloaded (its pop3 not hotmail) , but unless im mistaken they cant know its been opened? so what sthe point?

 

[500E]

I get like 700 over 2 days at my E500.org account - its MADNESS!

 

[Rory]

Why do they send this crap out? Does anybody ever read them or respond?

See this article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/18/the_economics_of_spam

That talks about 50 responses per million. I've seen articles that suggest spam makes money for the spammers with response rates of 1 in 1 million.

You hear all the time about people who fall for phishing emails, and wealthy people who get suckered into the Nigerian 419 scams.