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Junkie Loves His Spam
VicPylon writes "Here is the reason we have to spend time and money on spam filters. This character actually responds to and buys from spam. I wonder if he is aware that he is supporting digital pollution?" I guess this proves that there really is something for everyone online.
Interesting they didn't give out his email address.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
There is only so much male enhancement products a man can buy.
They seem to be the only spam i've been getting lately. Maybe my wife is feeding them my email addresses...
This is why I'm not completly against Spam, but I wish they would clearly mark it so those who don't want it won't get it and this guy will.
Ah, I get it now. Those "enlarge your penis" spams really do work - if you respond to them, you're nothing but a big dick.
I've got some old junk around the house I could probably dress up in an ad. I should mail him, "Do not miss out on this opportunity! xcxzxczx"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This guy needs a better hobby than answering spam. Maybe he can practice dodging oncoming traffic.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
People buy crap sold by infomercials.
You can sell anything to almost anybody.
An idiot is born everyday.
...my comment on the other thread. It seems there really are people out there who value their inbox being filled with mindless junk.
In a survey by MailShell, a San Francisco antispam company, 8% of respondents said they have bought products via spam. Spammers say that percentage is probably low because many people are too embarrassed to admit responding to spam.
Well, there you go. Far higher than I'd ever have imagined...and the spammers admit that replying to spam is embarrassing. Guess they realise a bad thing when they see it.
Although
Mr. Soto recently spent more than $100 on vitamins
you do have to question the man's ability to appreciate the value of a dollar. 100 bucks on vitamins? I'll go down the high street and get three bottles for 10, thank you very much.
He must have the lowest mortgage rate ever.
Did I miss anything? I mean damn, how many different ways can you spell V!@G.RA???!
i'm a christian, and the only feeling i have towards him is not compassion, but wanting to beat some ever-living sense into him. sorry jc
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Nothing about his activites seemed very interesting until I read this part:
He says he purchased two pornography Web sites, again via spam, and ran them for a while, but then he decided they weren't worth the trouble and disabled them.
Spam that advertises buying and managing for porn sites? What?!
I assume the reason they have what looks like a courtroom sketch of the guy accompanying the story rather than a photograph is because his enormous penis keeps blocking the camera.
Well this is somewhat related to the second, but I bet his Nigerian friend helped him bring in a few extra thousand a month.
# fuser -v
#
The problem I would have with buying *anything* from a spam email is the fact that the company has resorted to spam to pitch their wares. To me, it always smells of desperation and contempt for the customer.
In the current anti-spam climate, a company cannot use spam to market themselves and be seen as a professionally-run organisation.
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
If the guy wants to buy from spammers, let him. We have to fight spam from another angle, not by supressing people's rights to do stupid things.
How does a guy earning $40k per year have a 2 bedroom apartment in Midtown Manhattan?
According to the article it takes one buyer out of 15,000 e-mails sent in order to break even. If more people would buy from spam, they'd have to send out fewer e-mails to break even, right?
I'd be interested to see how often he pays for something he never receives...
I have discovered a truly marvelous
I don't think so. This could very well be completely true. This guy is a habitual impulse buyer. He's addicted to buying stuff and it evidently gives him a thrill to do so.
I've known several people that were addicted to buying things like this, only they did it at the mall, or pawn shops, or thrift stores, etc. I had a friend who's parents bought stuff all the time. Their house was stacked high with junk they never used or even touched again after it was purchased. They literally had to move large piles of random things whenever they wanted to sit on the couch, eat at the table, or do most anything in the house.
If you're addicted to this extent, what better place to feed your addiction than the internet and specifically, your email box? There are thousands of things pitched to you every day (maybe every hour!) no matter what you're doing on the net.
Just like every other media outlet, it screams "YOU NEED MORE STUFF!"... but I digress. :-)
I believe the parent is referring to the "Make Penis Fast!" email, for those that haven't read it yet.
See this post on news.admin.net-abuse.email: Orlando Soto sells spamming tools to desperate webmasters. Funny he didn't mention that to the journalist...
Mr. Soto used to haunt rummage sales, thrift shops and flea markets, but he hurt his back in the mid-1990s, so he turned to the Internet.
... These kinds of activities are like crack cocain to certain types of buyers. My aunt used to make crafts that she would sell at the 4H fairs and craft festivals, and she would take me an my cousins to flea markets and rummage sales.
That sentence, quoted from the article, describes his entire interest in spam. There are 10 types of people who shop... those who go to flea markets, and those who don't.
Flea markets, rummage sales, garage sales, yard sales, thrift stores, salvation army stores, craft festivals, 4H fairs, county fairs, state fairs
For those of you who aren't connected, it's a way of life for some people.
And this guy, because he hurt his back, is merely doing the online version....
The Internet, and spam, is just providing an unfortunately convenient way for him to acquire these purchases.
The article explains that he used to hunt rummage sales, thift stores, and flea markets, then turned to the Internet after hurting his back. He buys on eBay, and via spam. Spam is just one part of his disease, and it made an interesting story. From the tour his wife gave of their apartment, it sounds like he doesn't need most of the stuff he buys--a typical symptom of hoarding.
Another symptom will be that he is unable to throw away things that he has purchased (like those boxes of vitamins), even if he doesn't need them or they are no longer of value.
OCD medication is usually ineffective for hoarding, but counseling can help.
At any rate, he does not respresent a typical email user, but at the same time, he is not alone. It is unfortunate, but there are people with these kinds of disorders out there, and they play right into the hands of spammers and telemarketers. The sad thing is when people take advantage of them.
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
Unfortunately, since it said he's a grandfather, that means he's already reproduced and passed on his stupidity genes. :-(
I'll make one exception: if they add the "ADV: " to the subject line, then I may give them the benefit of the doubt.
The whole article seems a bit phony. Especially the use of the word "anti" by Mr. Soto. There is one group of people who are fond of using the word "anti" to describe those who dislike spam. I get a strong feeling that this is not just some innocent guy that likes to buy from spam, and his admission of spamming once before leaves me even more suspicious.
Beer wants to be free
This was on the front page of WSJ yesterday so I assume they did some fact checking on it. It wasn't buried in the back of the paper.
.NET co-workers to move to Java. I don't think so.
That said, my first reaction, is one I always have: why when an interesting topic comes up: why do I find only sarcastic/hopefully humorous comments get through my level 4 filter? Still waiting for an answer on that.
I read the article in paper and my reaction was that they did everyone a service by writing about such people. I have no idea why anyone would buy this stuff but the fact of the matter is that spammers wouldn't spam if they didn't make money from it. MS will only change the type of software they make when they don't make money from it. It's a simple, though perhaps unlikeable fact. For every piece of junk that clutters your tv screen, your mailbox or whatever there is a reason for it other than just to bother you (and me!). It's there because someone is making money from it and because someone, like the guy in article, actually buys it.
I don't think educating such buyers is a reasonable option. Sort of like educating the user of one OS to choose to go to another one. This afternoon I'm going to educate my
But the only way to solve a problem is to understand it. The more we understand people like this guy the more likely it is that someone can find a way to direct spam/bad commercials to them and not the rest of us. Maybe a Do Call Me list.
If so much spam actually finds buyers, why don't any of these people honor opt-outs?
And if there's really people like Mr. Soto, what's the problem with actually having opt-in?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Spammers employ many illegal methods. They forge headers, use other people's servers to send the spam, use other people's real addresses as the sender, they do brute force username dictionary attacks against mail servers, they lie about how they got your address or about your ability to be removed, and finally they sell fake and infringing products (Viagra is a trademark) and are full of frauds and scams. Those are all illegal, or at least they should be. Do you support those things? I doubt it. So how do you propose to only allow "good" spam while blocking this stuff?
The article shows him refusing a number of emails that are presented to him. So, while I tend to agree with you on the hoarding part, I think either it is not to a pathological degree -or it's a different pathology entirely.
"Write to Mylene Mangalindan at mylene.mangalindan@wsj.com". Shall we?
I personally beleive that this is somewhat clear proof that marketing by e-mail can work, but only if it is taken in hand by honest companies who do not deal through an nigh-on anonymous mass-mailing scheme. Take a look at the statistics, and you will notice 8% of the respondents to a survey conducted asking whether or not they had bought anything through spam replied affirmatively, though spammers say that this number is higher due to the fact that most people having bought products through spam can not bear the embarassment of admitting it. Now if you reflect on those numbers, and consider that a lot of people delete spam as soon as they see some in their inbox, or use some kind of spam filter, you could perhaps come to a conclusion which may not be so far off the truth.
Let's suppose the companies which now sell their products through mass-mailing could come to some sort of agreement with e-mail services. This agreement would involve allowing the user to choose whether or not they would like to receive some offers from the company that has come to the agreement with the service. The e-mail service could choose to impose limits to the company, such as the number of e-mails sent and the products offered in the e-mails. As this feature would be an opt-in option, the user would be responsible for what comes through their inboxes. I think this kind of feature would actually benefit every party involved, as the e-mail service could really control what would be coming through to their users' inboxes, the users would know what to expect in their inboxes, and the companies could actually make more profit from this system. What I mean by this is, as most e-mail users would be expecting to receive their offers by e-mail, they would be the people who would be actually expected to buy what comes through. There would be more sales than there would be complaints and deletion. Last of all, this would of course benefit the people who would like to receive some honest, discounted offers by e-mail. The whole system would be completely legal.
In my opinion, this is how marketing by e-mail could actually be something that works, and that, at the end of the day, leaves both the sales companies, the e-mail services and the e-mail users satisfied.
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
He buys [snip] pharmaceuticals for himself.
I wonder what kind...
Mr. Soto says he also has bought some adult DVDs and videos via spam, but never got around to marketing them.
cUmc0\/ered h%0t dvdz!!! on1y u5ed 1nce!!! 51ightly 5t1cky.
Predictive text is shiv!
The Journal started using stippled portraits, or hedcuts in 1979. Apparently, they remind readers of currency or engraved stock certificates. Although the style can be approximated with image filters, the WSJ's hedcuts are hand drawn.
We complain about the quality of our television programs ("I'm a TV Star, Get Me Out Of Here!", "Joe Millionaire", etc.), but they stay on the air because Joe Denomenator watches them. He doesn't watch "Babylon 5" or anything that makes him think. (A producer of Andromeda is reported to have left the show because the network wanted less story line and more action. It was "too hard" for Joe Denomenator to follow multi-show stories. Andromeda has been a mashed-potato show ever since.)
Other mass media has followed. In the checkout line we get tabloids shouting "Lose ten pounds in a week without getting off your sorry ass", and "Have better sex with whomever it is you are banging this week". The venerable TV Guide has become TV Gossip instead of a programming guide.
Big box stores filled with cheap imports smother smaller, local stores until they go out of business, leaving nothing but cheap imports available. Joe Denomenator doesn't want to pay $20 for a radio that will last for years, he wants to pay $10 for one that he'll have to replace in a month, because it is too much effort to keep track of the one he has for more than a month anyway.
Why would anyone think that the Internet would be different, after using it became a "right" for Joe Denomenator?
If he is a spammer, by his own admission, then anything that he said with regards to "loving spam" is instantly suspect. Rule #1: Spammers LIE.
Of course, there is rule #3: Spammers are STOOPID.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
DON'T harass this guy. If you do, you're certainly worse than any spammer.
Yes, he's contributing to the spam problem (probably without realizing it), but it's not like he's going around clubbing baby seals. He just has an unhealthy shopping addiction. Calling and harassing people is not going to solve anything. Instead, write an article on "why responding to SPAM is BAD" and get it printed. Do something constructive.
Editors: Please remove the post containing his phone number. This kind of crap is giving Slashdot a bad name.