Ravn's Rants and Ravings - Who would buy things from Spam? |
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| Author:
| ravn
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| Submitted: |
11-Jan-2006 19:35:30 |
| Imported From: |
zZine (original author: ravn)
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There is something I just don't understand. I've thought about it night and day, and I just cannot figure it out for the life of me. This incomprehensible thing is spam. No, not the stuff that comes in a can at your local supermarket.
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First though, let me explain why spam makes sense. Email is very very cheap to send. Really, it's free. I mean yea, you have to pay for Internet service (but that can be gotten around), and things like power and all that (but those can be gotten around too if you're clever!) but for all intents and purposes, email is free to send - no matter how many people you want to send it to. Think about all the junk mail you get in your mailbox (not your email mailbox, snail mail). That is spam. Except, unlike regular spam, this stuff costs money to mail! Imagine, the same kind of advertising as junk mail... except absolutely free? And you can send it to all the people you want? It's a marketers/advertisers dream come true. The thing is though, since snail mail costs money, it keeps your junk mail fairly honest. It is too expensive for scammers to use (for the most part). Email doesn't have this problem, which is where all the scammers come into play. Since it is free, there is no barrier to entry, and people who aren't even selling things can start to send you stuff! And reputable companies, since it is so cheap, are found sending you more and more messages than you could possibly want.
That isn't the problem, though. You see, if no one bought anything from all those snail mail junk mailings, the companies would stop sending them. They're only effective if they increase revenue. The same holds true with email. In the real world, however, in order to be effective, lots of people need to buy (to compensate for the investment spent on advertising). Online, only a tiny percentage of the people you reach (because it is so cheap, and you can reach so many people) need to buy something in order to make money. But wait! Doesn't this apply to scammers too? I mean, if no one bought their "products" wouldn't they stop? Yes. Unfortunately, people buy from spammers all the time. This is what I don't get.
Are you telling me that people are so incredibly stupid that they are buying (for example) sexual enhancement "drugs" from some unknown person on the Internet who had to butcher the spelling in the email to get past the spam filters? Does this seem like a trustworthy person? What in the world are people thinking? Personally, if I was going to buy Viagra, I wouldn't get it from an email that called it v!agr4. Maybe that's just me. It gets even worse though!
There are these scams, called 419 (or Nigerian) scams. Basically, the scammer sends an email out claiming to be some foreigner who has had a friend/relative/associate die. This person left the scammer a great deal of money, but they cannot get to it themselves. Oh, but they have a deal for you. They can't touch the money, but they can transfer it to you. And if you would be willing to let them transfer it to you, and then transfer it to them, they'll let you keep a nice big cut. Do people really think they're so lucky that someone they've never met is just going to drop a deal for millions of dollars into their lap through an email? And it gets even better still! To do this, you have to send them thousands of dollars first - to some guy you've never met, in some other country. First of all, it would be illegal even if it weren't a scam. Secondly, come on! Why would you wire some random person thousands of dollars just because he claimed that you would get millions out of it later on? Are people really so dense? I just don't get it.
Now, you already know I think some people don't deserve to be allowed to use a computer. These people probably fall into that category.
But, failing that, what can be done? Charge for sending emails? Bad idea. Email is too engrained into society now to change it so dramatically. I'm afraid I don't know the solution. Much smarter people than myself have been working on it, and no one has come up with anything workable yet. I guess the best we can do is try to educate the poor fools who buy into this stuff, and try to get the spammers run out of business. I just wish someone could explain to me why!
Ravn
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
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