Spam stupidity
Spam email seems to be getting worse on an almost daily basis. I do wonder sometimes why they bother - the techniques they use are so basic and flawed that surely only those with a complete brain-bypass would ever be taken in?
That's the problem though -it costs nothing to send spam so it's worth sending out even if only one in a hundred thousand are suckered - that's 25 sales if you send out 2.5 million emails (a not uncommon figure). The only way to stop this as far as I can see would be charging for mass emails - I'm not sure how that would work exactly, but it would certainly cause some spammers pause for thought - their number one reason for doing it would have been taken away.
What I don't get though is the lengths they go to get around people's spam filters by mis-spelling the keywords or using similar tricks. Surely if you set up a spam filter to discard all emails which mention Viagra it's because you are not interested in purchasing Viagra? So if a spam email arrives in your inbox as a result of them having spelt it "Vjagrah" you're not going to suddenly have a complete change of heart are you?
"You know, I thought I didn't want any Viagra, but now that I've read this badly written email I realize just how wrong I was!"