Do you know why we get so much junk mail these days? It’s the same reason we get so many telemarketing calls – because it works. People are actually dumb enough to buy the things they see advertised in spam.
This article in Wired talks about a security flaw at a spammer’s website that made their log files available. According to these logs, this one site has received about 6,000 orders for their “magic” pills since July 4. Even worse, most people ordered 2 bottles at about $50 each.
According to the article, the site is owned by a 19-year-old high-school dropout. He buys the pills for $5 per bottle and pays other people about $10 per order to send out spam. So if each order was for only 2 bottles (some were for more), that means he made ($600,000 – $60,000 – $60,000) $480,000 in about the last 30 days. That’s nearly half a million dollars for doing nothing.
I’m definitely in the wrong line of work.