What’s my motivation?

I don’t understand you, spammers. I just. Don’t. Get you.

Let’s just pretend that I have an issue with Erectile Dysfunction, shall we? I’m probably pretty ashamed, and I might be a little worried about why willy’s wilting. Because I am a free-thinking, intelligent man, I am going to TALK TO MY DOCTOR ABOUT IT. What the hell makes you think I’m going to click a link in an email from some heavy-metal communist guy called “AXle cHAn” that advertises “ch33p v1aGRA”?

Let me point out the many flaws in these marketing plans:

1) Do not buy drugs from people you do not know. This is a lesson all of us learn in University.

2) Think back to that time you bought the “ch33p” toilet paper. Is cheaper better?

3) If you’re buying drugs to embetterify your johnson, do you *really* want the discount, dollar store pharmaceuticals? Really?

4) Where do you suppose these “h4xx0rz” get their “ch33p v1aGRA”? EITHER it’s stolen from the pharmaceutical company or the pharmacy itself, or they’ve stolen them from an old folks’ home, OR they’ve just put a bunch of cat urine into a tablet and called it kosher.

5) Do not give money to someone who cannot remember in two sentences, never mind two paragraphs, how to spell their name.

Honestly, does anyone fall for this crap? Why are there still spammers out there? If the United States Bureau of Homeland Security can track a fly’s fart from space, why the hell can’t they stop spam? If we can clone sheep, for pete’s sake, why can’t we figure out how to make “ch33p v1aGRA” go away?

And Armundo Ngibi from Nigeria? I don’t believe you one whit that my relative in your country died and left me 3.2 million dollars, and that all I have to do to claim it is to send $1500 in clean, unmarked bills to some post box in Peru. People in my FAMILY, Mr. Ngibi, don’t leave anybody anything except good memories and twelve-year-old scotch.

Posted

5 May 2010

Everything Else Drawer

cenobyte

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Comments

6 responses to “What’s my motivation?”

Kate

5 May 2010

Sadly, there must be plenty of people who fall for this crap, otherwise it wouldn’t be so ubiquitous. They just wouldn’t bother if it didn’t pay.

Reply
cenobyte

5 May 2010

But who DOES that?

Who sits in front of their computer screen and thinks, “you know, this email address/URL is a 75-character jumble of random letters, numbers, and symbols. I bet I can trust them to provide me brand-name meds for a third the retail cost!”

I mean, how is this any different from believing the guy who rings your doorbell and says he’s selling gourmet dinners, if you buy a subscription for a thousand dollars…the guy wearing sweat pants and with five o’clock shadow…How is this different from the people who call your house and try to convince you that if you give them $2400, you can have a free cruise?

I CAN BUY A CRUISE FOR $2400, you big dummies!

Don’t get it. Just. Don’t. Get it.

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Kate

5 May 2010

Me neither. Can’t believe people buy it; but they do.

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Mrgd2u

5 May 2010

Never underestimate the stupidity of others.

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Neo

6 May 2010

As ridiculous as the idea is to a THINKING person who can reason, there is as Kate mentioned, a demand for stuff that’s cheap. I however, agree with you Ceno.

Probably the same reason as there are warning labels. Its not for the people who can figure out that injesting Javex is a bad idea, but more for the people who do it and can’t figure out why their innards are being pissed out.

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Parmeisan

11 May 2010

Also, we can’t get rid of it because e-mail is too easy to fake. The server doesn’t do any checking, it just accepts whatever it’s told. The email address you’re sending from doesn’t even have to exist. I can send you an email claiming to be from [email protected], or [email protected], it doesn’t matter. Doing that is illegal, but if you do it from some internet cafe, who’s gonna put in the time to catch you? You’re just one drop in the bucket. (Also, it might not be illegal everywhere, I dunno).

Most of the programs that send out spam email probably took less than half an hour to write, were written a decade ago, and send out thousands of messages a second. They could get paid a few bucks for getting one message to millions of people and it would be worth their time. So I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those really shady “companies” try out a dozen different strategies and if only one of them elicits one response, then they’ve broken even.

Also: “Who sits in front of their computer screen and thinks, “you know, this email address/URL is a 75-character jumble of random letters, numbers, and symbols. I bet I can trust them to provide me brand-name meds for a third the retail cost!”” The people who don’t know how to check to see where it came from. Or care. Maybe they figure, “There’s a chance. It could save me from having to talk to my doctor, and it’s not a big price to risk losing.” (And ’cause not everyone is free-thinking and intelligent.)

It really is too bad, though.

(I high school I did a presentation on an idea wherein email cost a penny to send. So I might spend a dollar a month on it, but then I wouldn’t get nearly so much spam. Ehh, might be worth it. Would possibly be just as difficult to implement that, though, as actually introducing standards that check your credentials.)

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