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

Enough is enough

[aztektum]

"V0te for G3orge W. Bush!' or 'J0hn Kerry for Presidnet@'"

Please /. editors run stories through a spell check. It should be "'Vote for George W. Bush!' or 'John Kerry for Presidnet'."

in this election

[a11]

.001% may just be what wins the chair

Re:Probably not very powerful

[Enrico Pulatzo]

|<3rry

use the &lt;

HTML Entities are your friend, or else a powerful enemy bent on global domination. I forget which

Also, preview is a friend

Are kidding me?

[yawgnol]

What a strange example to use in your premise!

You think SPAM is going to have an effect on this election? SPAM!? You must be living in a different America my friend, because you can send Men In Black to beat me with rubber hoses while writing "Kerry Killed Your Cat HA HA!" in blood on my wall and I will still drag myself on broken arms to the polls to cast my vote against Bush on election day.

So no, we're well $#%@ beyond spam making a difference at this point...

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.