Why Do Spammers Send Spam?
A lot of people ask me "why do people send spam"?. Let me tell you a secret about email spam:
If spamming didn't work, spammers wouldn't send it.
Yeah, no kidding. Internet security experts estimate that there are only around 200 spammers IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. Why do they do it? Simple: they make money. If they didn't make money, they'd do something else. I received this email today. Look at it carefully and ask whether YOU would fall for it:
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Dear Email Account User,
Due to excess abandoned of Webmail Account, email account Webmaster has decided to refresh the database and to delete inactive accounts to create space for fresh users. To verify your email Account, you are to reply to this email immediately and provide the information below correctly:
eID:
Password:
Verify Password:
Failure to do this will immediately render your Webmail Account non-active from email account system.Database refreshing shall commence once a response is not received within 48hrs.
Thanks You!
Email Account Centre {EMAC}*EMAC*66506*
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Whether YOU would fall for this or not, someone has...probably tens of thousands of unsuspecting people have given this guy their email account information. Somebody gave money to those pesky Nigerians. Someone keeps trying to use that Viagra coupon.
Email spam costs us a LOT of money and a LOT of time. A recent study by Microsoft estimates that 97% of all email is spam. Despite the best efforts of those security experts, spammers still do it because silly people make it easy for them to make money doing it.
The only way to REALLY eliminate spam is to choke it out of existence. If spammers don't make money doing their dastardly thing, they'll go elsewhere. They don't do it for kicks, they do it because it makes them rich. Do us all a favor: stop falling for it.
Posted: Thu, Jul 22 2010 - 15:10 PM
Category: Geeks, Gadgets, and Gizmos
