The holycow.com server runs Spamassassin to filter out spam email from legitimate messages. It’s pretty good, and only a few spam get through its filters and actually reach my inbox. This is because I’ve enabled a Spamassassin option called “Spambox” which automatically puts spam it finds into a subfolder of my email account on the server, which Outlook doesn’t bother to download. (For my other email accounts I run Spambayes as an Outlook plugin, but they have a “proxy” version that will work for any email client you choose to use. I highly recommend it.)
I’d forgotten about this spambox until today as I was checking some other holycow.com settings, and decided to take a look.
Since November 28, 2003 my puck@holycow.com address has received 35,833 spam emails totally 260MB. That’s 14 weeks of spam, so 2560 spam/week, or 366 spam/day or 15 spam per hour, every hour of every day.
The fact that not only do I never read this spam, but even if I did accidentally read it I would never purchase their product/information/scheme doesn’t bother the assholes who send this. They’re relying on math to make their money. Even if only one in a thousand emails (that cost them nothing) gets them a response, then a 10 million mailout will get 10,000 responses from morons who think there is actually a pill that can make their penis bigger that hasn’t been announced on CNN as the greatest invention of all time.
The solution? STOP BEING MORONS. If you get spam, even if it’s something you’ve been looking for (like hot porn) ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY DO NOT RESPOND WITH INTEREST. In fact, if it’s a legitmate company (like, say, McAfee who keeps spamming me about their antivirus products) put them on your mental list of assholes-to-not-buy-from.
Tell your friends this and tell them to tell their friends. When your buddy finally gets his new computer and asks you to come over and help him set it up with “that Internet thing”, sit him down and explain spam and what he can do to help. Make sure he tells his wife and kids about this, and make him promise to spread the word.
The day spam stops being profitable because nobody is responding is the day spam dies.
