My address has clearly made it onto a list somewhere. I now get 40+ spams a day, mostly from two sources trying to sell me Viagra. Why do they bother? If I’d wanted it I would have made the purchase when the emails started. As they’ve asking me the same question 400+ times and I still haven’t made a purchase you’d think that they would consider giving up.

Go on go on go on go on go on go on go on go on go on go on go on go on go on.

No understand.

They helped me grow 6″

Won’t that increase the risk of trapping it behind your knee?

They helped me grow 6″

your feet must be nearly vertical in those special shoes.

As they’ve asking me the same question 400+ times and I still haven’t made a purchase you’d think that they would consider giving up.

Presumably they believe that you still need to resolve the problem.

I haven’t had any spam emails for yonks – obviously someone tipped them off that I’m a big boy 8)

I’ve long suspected that you are have a big ‘un ernie 😉

Spam emails great. Someone pisses you off, all you need is their email address and about 10 minutes spare

They helped me grow 6″

Do you bang your head on pub beams now?

As they’ve asking me the same question 400+ times and I still haven’t made a purchase you’d think that they would consider giving up

you’re making the assumption that they are keeping track – they’re not, they’re automated, they don’t care because there is very little if any human interaction or decision making involved its just ‘insert list of emails, press go’

I was flicking through a book (that I now wish I’d bought) by a guy who’d managed to track down a few of the guys behind some of the spamming operations and interview them. Things might have changed a bit since then but given the volume of spam traffic it was surprising how few people are behind it all.

It seems like the repetition of spam mails suggests they won’t work – that the daftness and obviousness of it gives the game away, but there are certain susceptible people whole respond to mails like that. Selling them a fake viagra or whatever isn’t really the point, you don’t even need to go through with the sale, once someone responds with a click they flag themselves as the sort of person who can be coerced and they’ll be targeted for much bigger scams.

When you read about people who’ve been targeted with things like lottery scams, it will be things like spam emails that will have put the victims in the scammer’s sights

Why do it? ‘A fool and his money are easily parted and there’s one born every minute.’

The margin they must make from a handful sales of whatever they are flogging (out of, say, a million emails sent) is obv enough to keep the operation going.

I went through a period of getting dozens, after signing up to get info from Arts & Crafts, the Canadian record label that Los Camposinos, The Dears, Broken Social Scene, and others were on. Oddly enough, a lot of the spam, for Viagra, watches, etc, were Canadian sourced…
I still get occasional phishing ones from ‘Santander’, ‘Halifax’, ‘Barclays’, etc, who assume that I have online accounts with all of them, erroneously.

I get loads, having subscribed to a site about 4 years ago then cancelled the subscription after about 3mths (within the cancel no fee thingy) Thankfully I notified my ISP and they slam them all into a my spam folder and delete then every week.. I must get about 60 per day.. I get all sorts, all the typical ones and some rather fruity ones too…

I started getting SPAM after a series of frustrating emails with YAHOO! customer services.
Not a very nice thing to do.

They are automated – there isn’t a person looking through and saying ‘Oh, he hasn’t bought any, we won’t send him any more’.

As for why they do it: there is a lot of money to be made. They are sent out in such vast quantities around the clock that it doesn’t matter if 99.99% of people are too smart for it, the other 0.01% that are gullible enough to cough up make it worthwhile.

Got a pretty good spam/phishing email yesterday:

Correct colour scheme, fonts and layout. Nice sent address and all the links go to the genuine HMRC website (apart from the “Claim My Refund” one obviously).

Decent job, but rather let down by the tenuous grasp of English.