On Tue, 04 Mar 2003 13:28:22 -0500, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
> I don't know of any way anybody might go about trying to prove or > disprove your opinion. The spam business and chain letter > business is so underground and clandestine. How many people would > openly admit to making or losing money in an illegal business? I > don't know of any way we can conduct any competent research to > investigate the profitability of this kind of business. In the I was once quite interested in "mail order opportunities" and investigated chain letters and other schemes as thouroughly as I could. I responded to ads, sent away for materials, tracked mailings with code letters and so forth. I plowed through tons of mail order offers. It became fairly obvious to me that the only money was being made by businesses that sold mailing lists, printing services or "how-to" books that advised other people how to get rich. The same offers and schemes circulated endlessly with variations just like the email spammers. This leads me to believe that the mechanisms are very much alike. Greedy, lazy people who want to "get rich quick" are easy to con, much easier than the general public who rightly think that things like the "Nigerian general scam" are ridiculous. It would be much easier to sell "how to make a fortune with email CD's". That's the kind of stuff that sells. -- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
