Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 02:59:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at keithlynch.net>
To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Speel checkers?
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com> wrote:
> I suppose spammers are operating on the shotgun-approach philosophy
> that there is *bound* to be a few suckers among all those thousands
> of email addresses ...

Thousands?  Try tens of millions.

> But I cannot imagine responding to *any* email offer spammed to me.

Neither can 99.99999% of the recipients -- no exaggeration.  Positive
response rates are about one in ten million.  That's all it takes.

> (Lately it's Viagra or some herbal wannabe, penis or breast
> enlargement and the perennial Work At Home/Make Big Money pitches.
> The casino pitches seem to have vanished.)

About a third of what manages to evade my filters is from various
Nigerian former first ladies and generals.  About once an hour, one
asks my assistance in recovering 30 million dollars or so, for which I
would receive about ten percent.  All I need do is loan them the use
of my bank account.  If I took them all up on it, and if they were all
telling the truth, I could be a billionaire by the end of the summer.

Evidently a lot of people fall for it.  I've heard this is now
Nigeria's largest industry.

> I find it easy and effortless to hit the "delete" key.

Literally effortless?  You wouldn't mind if next year you have to do
it ten times as much?  Or if the year after that, it's ten times as
much again?

New Jersey fan Bill Wells receives over 100,000 spams a day.  He's
only a little ahead of me on the spam meltdown curve.  And I'm only
a little ahead of you.  Exponential growth is a terrible thing.

I think a fair punishment for spammers is for them to be jailed with
a keyboard, and released as soon as they press delete once for every
spam they ever caused to be sent.  Some of them have sent so many
that they cannot complete this task in a normal lifetime.  But they
blithely imposed it on the rest of us.
--
Keith F. Lynch - kfl at keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but
unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) is not acceptable.  Please do not send me
HTML, "rich text," or attachments, as all such email is discarded unread.