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What Happens When You Reply To ALL of Your Spam

networkworld.com — Each S.P.A.M. volunteer saw an average of 70 spam messages arrive in their in-box each day, with men receiving about 15 more per day than women. That was a lot to answer, but "Penelope Retch" — the alias that Mooney chose for her S.P.A.M. adventure — answered every single message.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 3, 2008

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  • MarianaPeyton, on 07/02/2008, -2/+136Gmail excludes all my spam. Props to Google!
  • bdub92, on 07/02/2008, -1/+87'Mooney — who had observed the family's PC crippled just before Christmas by a virus " I cannot tell you how many times I've had friends who buy new computers because their old one had a "virus"...
  • CCmachined, on 07/03/2008, -1/+54gmail's junk filter FTW
  • Cancerkitty, on 07/02/2008, -2/+55"the five U.S. participants received the most spam: 23,233 messages over the course of the month" Holy crap.
  • shauntacular, on 07/03/2008, -1/+49Spam is bad? Yeah, and that girl I met on Myspace the other day isn't a model from Brazil! C'MON!
  • ChronicColonic, on 07/02/2008, -1/+44You mean the Nigerian Government windfall I have been expecting is FAKE?!? CRAP!!! This just ruined my day!
  • hollywoodphony, on 07/02/2008, -1/+4023,233? I'm pretty sure I get more than that. Thanks, Yahoo!
  • ieatpizza, on 07/03/2008, -1/+36noobs
  • Inflammo, on 07/03/2008, -0/+35Why would anyone still use Yahoo when GMail exists?
  • Lucas123, on 07/02/2008, -4/+36I wish someone would invent a virus that attacks spam servers that the average consumer could send.
  • zadadka, on 07/03/2008, -0/+30There is only ONE guarantee when you reply to spam.
    You'll get more....lots more.

    Common Sense 101.
  • billyvnilly, on 07/03/2008, -1/+31Spammers are fat, lazy dudes that live in basements... whats to be afraid of.
  • banmaster, on 07/03/2008, -4/+33So? They OUGHT to ***** know.
    Why the ***** should I be deluged by spam being sent from some *****'s computer who doesn't know how to update their virus scanner??
    Kick these ***** off the net and make it better for the rest of us!
  • aladrin, on 07/03/2008, -0/+29My original email account used to get 30,000 SPAM per month. It's down to about 12,000 now. Since I moved that domain to Google, only a few of those get into my inbox each month. I'm amazed at how good their SPAM detection is.
  • Snake100, on 07/03/2008, -0/+27....and then they log into their email accounts which had virus attachments open them up and get the same problem again :P
  • inactive, on 07/03/2008, -0/+26the irony of the GIGANTIC ad that loads on the screen on page 2 ... spam was blah blah then dear god ! *Screen DARKENS* downloading .gif.... WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY NEWSWEEK?
  • Iluvator, on 07/03/2008, -4/+28That would be a terrible idea, since a great deal of the spam we see comes from computers that don't know they're sending it (ie, unwitting members of botnets). You'd be sending a virus to some poor soul who has no idea it's happening.
  • twiztidsinz, on 07/03/2008, -3/+21because a surprising number people don't know how to do that or feel they have too much 'important stuff' and will deal with it.
  • KMye, on 07/03/2008, -0/+15Minarchian's right. The stupid bitch gave out her home address, many times it seems...and then went and did a news article that links her real name to her pseudonym.
  • Gutterpunk, on 07/03/2008, -0/+15yeah I think that most of the emails with a payload are sent by Best Buy...
  • mdude85, on 07/03/2008, -0/+15"[The spam] grew exponentially, so I stopped giving out my home address," she says, adding, "I am concerned about the environment.""

    I'm speechless
  • Minarchian, on 07/02/2008, -6/+21This is interesting.

    But what happens if/when one of these spammers look for Penelope's emails and figure out where she lives?

    I think I would be more worried about than anything else in the experiment.
  • inactive, on 07/03/2008, -0/+14I got my free Gold Rolex watc|-| in the m@il today!!!
  • sarge, on 07/03/2008, -0/+14I think a few of my users are part of the McAfee S.P.A.M. experiment -- they just haven't told McAfee... They reply to emails from people they don't know, sign up for crap using their work email address, and click on things they know they shouldn't -- and then bitch at me when their inbox gets filled with junk.
  • tito13kfm, on 07/03/2008, -2/+16***** YOU
  • twiztidsinz, on 07/03/2008, -0/+13There was a story on Digg a while back, about a guy/company who developed a way to use a bot net (I think it was seized by the authorities) to send out a 'virus' to all the people infected to fix the problem and destroy the original virus and dismantling the whole of the bot net.
    I think they ended up NOT doing it because of the Moral dilemma -- they could have used the existing 'unauthorized access' to distribute it, but then they'd be just the same: abusing the vulnerabilities.
  • ScottoGato, on 07/03/2008, -1/+13Spammers are spammers because they're trying to make money. They're not going lose all of that little bit of money that they make by scamming to try and hunt someone down.
  • banmaster, on 07/03/2008, -5/+17Coz, like most computer owners, shes a stupid ignorant jerk. Thats why.
  • centran, on 07/03/2008, -1/+12I would like to see the difference between someone responding to all the SPAM and someone "trying" to unsubscribe from every SPAM.
  • sublimemm, on 07/03/2008, -0/+11where
  • drjekelmrhyde, on 07/03/2008, -0/+10Wait but these penis pills really work
  • dsoleil, on 07/02/2008, -2/+12Wow. I always wondered what would happen if you did that.
  • cindya, on 07/03/2008, -0/+10Agreed. I abandoned my hotmail account because of Spam overload. No more than 2 per month get thtough to my gmail inbox.
  • ScottoGato, on 07/03/2008, -3/+13vastly superior? GTFO
  • krustie, on 07/03/2008, -0/+9http://www.google.com/mail/help/fightspam/spamexpl ...
  • mrm3x1can, on 07/03/2008, -0/+8ironically, i got a pop up asking me to subscribe and fill out a survey while reading the article
  • mike81890, on 07/03/2008, -2/+10The crew of the Enterprise had a similar dilemma with the Borg.
  • Oronar, on 07/03/2008, -1/+9I signed up for Gmail back when it was invite only. I've only had one legit email caught by the spam filters and maybe a total of 10 spam emails getting through. Gmail is the god of spam filtering.
  • suttercain, on 07/03/2008, -1/+8"I'm amazed at what true junk is out there when you're clicking through on e-mail."

    ....Amazed?.... Really?
  • bjornski, on 07/03/2008, -2/+9Yeah, I thought it was quite an interesting article. It was neat to see how they broke up what regions received what type of spam the most.

    If you want to go read more on the project (like I did), here's the link.
    http://www.mcafeespamexperiment.com/

  • DeathfireD, on 07/03/2008, -0/+7The 90's called, they want their spam back.
  • lazlonger, on 07/03/2008, -1/+8that article is spam. It does NOT tell you what happens, other than your computer slows down. "results to be released tuesday"...and all that. bull.
  • bjornski, on 07/03/2008, -1/+8Well, to their "partners".

    But yes, you do get targeted ads with Gmail.
  • ultrafez, on 07/03/2008, -1/+7What a bunch of *****, it would have done so much good to fix it, why not exploit people one last time for the greater good!
  • CCmachined, on 07/03/2008, -1/+7DAMN!
  • sq2shooter, on 07/03/2008, -0/+6If tomorrow everyone switched to Gmail, this problem would go away. The spammers emails would basically reach nobody. If I could only make that happen.
  • mattyx, on 07/03/2008, -1/+7That is a really annoying ad on that page.
  • modelchick8806, on 07/03/2008, -1/+7Anyone else find it ironic that when you attempt to uninstall McAfee Antivirus it's never fully removed?
  • stopbrorape, on 07/03/2008, -6/+13If that woman's PC was crippled by a virus why didn't she reformat the hard drive and install windows again.
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