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    Why the spammers keep doing their job?

    September 26th, 2008

    I was reading yesterday a newsletter and the publisher was complaining about the amount of spam he recently received. And then he said,

    I never could understand the spammers. I would never open a spam email, much less buy anything.

    Well, I think that there are many people not understanding why the spammers keep sending their spam and that’s why I wrote this article.

    If you want to find out the sad reason that makes the spammers exist, then keep reading …

    First of all, let me clarify one thing: when you subscribe to an ezine or newsletter, or mailing list, and then you get it … this is not spam. Only the people like John from my below story yell spam every time when they receive a solo ad from an ezine they subscribed to.

    Let’s come back to our topic and respond to this question:

    “I never buy anything from spammers. My friends are doing the same like me. Why those spammers keep spamming us?”

    Let me answer to this question by telling you a real story …

    One month ago, a guy from Arizona – let’s call it John – visited one of my websites, started to place an order, skipped the first step where he was supposed to submit the ad he wanted me to publish, paid for the advertising space and then did … nothing.

    Seeing that he doesn’t send me his ad, I sent him an email:

    Thank you for paying me to publish an advert for you but … you didn’t let me know the text of the ad you want me to publish. Can you do it now, please?

    Can you believe what was the answer?

    John said, “What is an advert?

    John purchased from me … something that he didn’t know what it is …

    Can you believe it? He didn’t understand what I was selling, he didn’t know if he needs what I was selling, but he still purchased it without asking anything …

    You know why? Because someone promised him that he will become rich (yeah, sure!) if he follows a certain plan that was including buying advertising space from ezines, one of the recommended ezines being mine.

    Isn’t this sad? Yes, there are people who believe anything they are told, and there are people who … don’t know their own language.

    John from Arizona didn’t know the meaning of the word “advert”.

    Sad indeed.

    Well, like John there are tons of people online.

    You know it very well in fact. The people are smart, normal, or … stupid. This is our world.

    Well, the spammers exist because stupid people exist. Those people are spammers’ main target. However, when the spammers harvest email addresses they don’t know whether an email address belongs to a stupid person or not. So everybody is spammed.

    I’m sure that not allowing stupid people to have internet access will drastically diminish the spam and will protect those people from throwing away their money.

    However, this will never happen … A government cannot say to someone, “Hey, you’re stupid and that’s why you don’t have the right to get an Internet connection“. We would get back in the past … and this cannot be a solution.

    I think that you should be very happy that you’re not a John from my real story. Pay that small price called spam that you are forced to delete daily, and be happy if you’re not stupid. This is a priceless gift!

    Or alternatively, get a powerful spam filter, install it and block anything sent to you, spam emails or … legitimate emails. Or better cut off your internet connection and hope that your online business will survive :-) [OK, I was joking. This last paragraph is addressed to people who think that spam filters and blocklists are a solution for spam]


    Beware of Comcast Spam Filters

    April 28th, 2008

    Whether you are a Comcast user or an ezine publisher, read carefully this real story.

    If you’re not a Comcast user nor a publisher, beware of spam filters. It may happen to you too!

    Now here are the facts.

    I’ve received an order for a solo ad from a past customer. He paid for his ad, but didn’t send me his solo ad.

    I’ve contacted him and let him know that I’ve received his payment and I expect the ad. He replied quite quickly and he said that he already sent his solo ad [he was using a Comcast email address].

    Since I have my own server and I don’t want to censor my own correspondence, obviously I didn’t install any spam filter. No spam filter, no server downtime … but still no solo ad from the customer.

    I figured out that it has to be something wrong at the customer’s end and I’ve asked him to forward the solo ad.

    He did it but … I didn’t receive it again … while his replies were received in good order.

    Strange, right?

    Then I’ve asked the customer to make a test:

    1. to send the solo ad from his Comcast email account to my wife’s email address that is on another server

    2. to send the solo ad to me from another email account he has.

    Here is the result of the test:

    1. the solo ad sent from Comcast to my wife’s email address never arrived at the destination.

    2. the solo ad sent from customer’s MSN account to me … arrived just fine.

    The conclusion is obvious: Comcast not only censors the messages their users receive, but Comcast censors also the messages their users send!

    And the most important and annoying thing is this: Comcast users are not notified by Comcast when a certain message they sent … is in fact DELETED by Comcast and is never sent to the intended recipient.

    Take care what email service provider you choose.

    You may have a lot of problems, you may create a lot of problems … and you may never know how close the issue is to your end.


    Published by AdsMarket Ezine on April 28, 2008.