• Home
  • About Me
  • Performance Metrics (FAQ)
  • Terms of Use
  • Why you need to read this blog
    •  

    Why the spammers keep doing their job?

    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]

    Did You Like the Article? Bookmark & Share It
    [del.icio.us] [Digg] [DropJack] [Facebook] [Furl] [Google] [MySpace] [Newsvine] [Reddit] [Squidoo] [StumbleUpon] [Twitter] [Email] More »

    This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 11:13 am and is filed under Spam Filters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    2 Responses to “Why the spammers keep doing their job?”

    1. Tim Southernwood says:
      September 27, 2008 at 4:36 pm

      There’s no question that spammers have a “fertile field” from which to reap their ill gained income, and I’ll agree that we can’t possible educate everyone on practicing due diligence, and just blocking ALL your mail or cutting off your connection is hardly a way to deal with spam, but there are things that our Governments and Regulators can do. Spam takes an enormous toll on everyone, lost productivity being the primary concern.
      What we need to see is more enforcement ACROSS borders. I’d like to see some funding for an international body to deal with these spammers. The technology is certainly there to track and aidentify the culprits…all that’s required is the determination to deal with these criminals.
      We all need to start pressing our government officials to do more to eradicate spam.

    2. admin says:
      September 27, 2008 at 6:05 pm

      Well, Tim, a government cannot do anything in this respect. Or almost anything. For example, you cannot fight against spam that comes from a country where a lot of things illegal in your country … are legal there.

      On the other hand, there are a lot more important issues to be solved by a government. There are a lot of thieves, criminals, etc. on the streets, right? There are wars or fights right now on this Earth … and many other major problems.

      It’s not so easy to solve the spam problem unless certain rights are restricted. I don’t know about you but I don’t want any of my rights to be restricted in order to be solved a certain problem that is mainly caused by online criminals helped by dumb people …

      I don’t want my rights to be restricted in order to defend some people like John from my story. Such people cannot be defended. They walk free on the streets, right? On the streets there are a lot more dangerous things that can happen in comparison with the Internet.

      Well, that’s it and thank you for your comment :-)

    Leave a Reply