How Powerful is the Turn-Off Power of Spam?

JayBonci asks: "Here's a question to the Slashdot readerbase. How powerful is the turnoff power of spam? With an upcoming political election in the United States, and a nation not very-well defended against mass unsolicited emailings, what kind of anti-marketing medium is spam? Could a spammer push out millions of: 'V0te for G3orge W. Bush!' or 'J0hn Kerry for Presidnet@', in the hopes to turn off (or on) voters. Spam marketing penetration is terrible (I've heard figures like .001%), but how powerful is its anti-marketing capabilities? An interesting discussion for the Slashdot audience." How often do you make the decision to NOT buy something form a company because you know they engage in spamming activities?

Comments

in this election

[a11]

.001% may just be what wins the chair

Not at all

[nusratt]

"How often do you make the decision to NOT buy something form a company because you know they engage in spamming activities?"

It's irrelevant.
I get 100-300 pieces of spam daily. For all but 5-10 pieces, all I ever see is the sender and the subject line, not the body.
Even if there's a recognizable brand-name in the subject line, the spam's usually from a sender who's NOT associated with the brand-name (e.g., Viagra).

In the few cases where the sender+subject plausibly *seems* like it might be from the legitimate brand, I never confirm it by opening the mail, for fear of whatever security vulnerability it might contain.

So I virtually never know that the brand-owner should be blamed for the spam.