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RC Car Craze: The Spam Connection
Rick Zeman writes "The Washington Post is reporting that the latest toy craze, miniature radio-controlled cars, is actually fueled by spam, and that spammers are actually helping brick and mortar retailers.
Dunno about you guys, but I get a couple of those a day...and I've resisted the 'temptation.'" The Washington Post wants to know your age, ZIP code and sex, and even provides you with hints on the first two.
...or read
the same story on MSNBC.
Ali estimates that for every e-mail Penn Media sends out, his firm wins one sale and retail stores win 20.
21 sales for every email sent???? Who the fuck is this guy trying to kid?????
It's a lot easier than boycotting 3rd world child labor or commercial software. To bad grandmothers and perverts are the true targets of spam; not us.
/. readers as well) would probably read it. It all depends on the target and message. If I could change my spam from porn and HGH and penis enlargement to computer-related hardware and software discounts, I would mind it a whole lot less...
Except that in this case, perverts (as far as I can tell) were not the true targets of spam. We (parents) were.
This spam did not interest me, specifically (because my son isn't into toys like that), but my coworker (who also has a 7 year old), who actually ordered some these cars, went on to say "Yeah, for once, some spam was actually useful. Go figure." Go figure, indeed.
I have over 30 email aliases assigned to my company email address for various software-registration and mail-order companies, and what not. And I get scores of spam and hate it. But if I ever got a spam that read something like "Get memory from cruical.com for 70% off", I (and I suspect many
It simply legitamizes the business of advertising through a cost-shifted model.
While the incremental cost to the end user (victim) is immeasurable on a single email basis, over a prolonged period the time spent weeding through the trash that comes in via email has a very real cost in lost time/productivity.
I've seen many arguments that there needs to be a balance between the rights of the recipient and the rights of the advertiser. Sad fact is, in any circumstance where any of the cost of the delivery of the advertisement is shifted to me and without my consent, it's consumer fraud. The adversiser has no right to take one microsecond of my time in effort to delete their advertisements from my email box, or to force me to get up from my chair to answer the phone or toss their ad from my fax machine.
Telemarketing, spam, junk faxes or stapling posters to my tree, the costs of delivery are heaped upon me and I'm sick and tired of it.
As far as spam goes, it's time to start pushing for the death of SMTP. It was nice when the Internet was sheltered, but it's now part of the real world and just like the real world, there's plenty of morons to cause problems.
The biggest problem with SMTP is that it has too much implicit trust. Spammers take advantage of this and either falsify headers or steal relay services. Giving priority to systems that have valid credentials and all but ignoring those that fail basic trust guidelines will cause spammers to play fair, or go broke. Those spammers that play fair will have no alternative but to honor remove requests or find their trust level set to zero.
I think we have cause and effect backwards...
Zip Zaps and the like are this year's "hot toy" just like Tickle Me Elmo and Cabbage Patch Kids have been in years past. Kids love them, so parents have got to go find them... stores everywhere are selling out, they can't make these things fast enough.
This popularity is not the result of spam, instead spammers are jumping on board trying to sell the product that parents would do anything, include pay over-inflated prices to a spammer, to get. It wouldn't surprise me if half the "Get your Zip Zaps from me!" spam turns out to be scams, yet parents are willing to take that risk at the hope of getting the toy little Jimmy must have.
Whenever anything gets this popular, spammers will be there to exploit the image.