Ben Forta

This would be utterly hilarious if it were not so sad. Wired is running a story (http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59907,00.html) about one of the many sites that uses spam to hawk products intended to enlarge male body parts. I personally get dozens of messages like this a day and I am sure you do too (fortunately I am a very secure person, I’d imagine that some recipients would panic thinking that someone was targeting them with a not so subtle message). It seems that an order log was exposed (that is Wired’s word choice, not mine) and it revealed that in just over a month 6000 people had responded to the spam and placed orders. As per the story, “Since July 4, Amazing Internet Products would have grossed more than half a million dollars from Goringly.biz, one of several sites operated by the company to hawk its penis pills.” Half a million dollars, in just over a month! In other words, we are doomed. As long as there are so many idiots out there responding to spam, there is an incredible business incentive for the abuse to continue. And as much as we despise spammers, part of me can’t fault them for making the best of the situation – sure most people won’t respond positively to the spam, but spammers don’t need most people to respond to make money, they just need a few thousand morons, and apparently there are plenty of those to go around. I am slowly finding myself getting more annoyed with those who respond to spam than I am the spammers. I have no idea if exposing that order list was intentional or not, but the opportunities afforded by that disclosure send the mind racing.