I mean it must do, considering that its so bloody common. But who clicks on them? I mean if you had problems with the size of your "member" why would you trust some random email to give you the answers?? Are people actually making money out of spamming? Am I in the wrong job?

And no, I will not "verify" my security password oh Bank of Scotland.

If it takes only 1 in a hundred to respond positivey to spam and there are millions of spams, then ultimately they DO work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5284618.stm

Spam messages that tout stocks and shares can have real effects on the markets, a study suggests.

E-mails typically promote penny shares in the hope of convincing people to buy into a company to raise its price.

People who respond to the "pump and dump" scam can lose 8% of their investment in two days.

Conversely, the spammers who buy low-priced stock before sending the e-mails, typically see a return of between 4.9% and 6% when they sell.

But who clicks on them?
i click on some of them to contact them about posters spamming our board with links to their sites.

I guess if its true that it does work, we will never see the end of it.

I think it does work.

Sending out spam takes very little money (if any at all) and barely any time to do (just set up a program to do it).

If you send out 200,000 messages and only 4 people actually buy something from your site as a result of your spam, you make money.

But so much of it is terrible! Terrible spelling, crap grammar, incomplete sentences, I mean that at least surely can't work can it?

i am not sure but i believe that there is such a thing called anti-spam laws.
if you make it known that you do not want mail from a certain sender and they keep sending it that can be classified as harassment. not sure though.

But so much of it is terrible! Terrible spelling, crap grammar, incomplete sentences, I mean that at least surely can't work can it?

Surely you underestimate how stupid people can be.

But so much of it is terrible! Terrible spelling, crap grammar, incomplete sentences, I mean that at least surely can't work can it?

Face value would suggest that, however the one thing with spam is it has to go up against networks of sophisticated filters that pattern match. A spammers method around such filtering is bad spelling, replacement of numbers for letters etc.

On the subject of "Does spam work?" you really have to define in what context. Does it work to decrease network stability and available bandwidth? Yes.
Does it work in the sense of it causing people to retaliate and cause even more problems? Yes.
Does it work to actually sell you something? No but thats because it's real intension is to identify if your e-mail address exists and has a person at the other end so they can then sell the collected e-mail address to business to increase how much spam you recieve.

All we can do for the time being is report spammers to the networks they are abusing and filter/blacklist and delete all the spam you recieve.

Something to add to this is the realisation of how "Sure winner stock quotes" should be dealt with. First you have to realise that if they do gain a 4-6% return on the shares they purchase, they first need the collateral to purchase the shares.

Now this is not something you can do by popping down to the local branch of your favourite bank and asking to speak to the manager on the subject of "Loans". Banks are not going to back such individuals on just a whim, this means the money used is either money they have gained from previous illegal means or from loan sharks/organised crime.

Such spam on the internet could be classed as cyberterrorism and therefore should have the rules applied that were applied to potential terrorist funds where the governments seize or freeze the assets, in this instance the complete freezing of trade for that named company.

Freezing funds would mean that the individuals that "borrowed" money from loansharks/organised crime would find the money confiscated for a long duration of time and such people are not known for their patience when it comes to repayments.

I'm sure it would be a sure fire way of ending this particular form of spam (probably with a few cement overcoats to boot)

This kid earned millions selling penis pills to idiots via spam.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/17/in_dispute_with_spammer_aol_hunts_gold/?page=1

As Absane mentioned, this form of "advertisement" costs next to nothing, so it can be profitable even with an insanly low sale/email ratio.

Not to mention how little time it takes to set up.

If spamming only takes 2 minutes of your time a day and returns next to nothing (but still something), I am certain the company's overtime budget won't be hurting.

The main problem here is the conversation is suggesting spamming makes a return and in reality it probably did originally doing the early days, however now everyone and his dog is doing it, which in turn is calling for tighter controls on email, I'm not sure where Microsoft and Aol's extended mail protocols have got to as of yet since they couldn't agree on an ISO (Industry Standard) however it's in the pipeline.

(Previous concerns were that the future email system will employ something similar to a Stamp charge like you'll find on mail. Obviously the problem here is everybody will be complaining at yet another charge)

The Microsoft idea (Send ID) was being held in a very proprietary way, so it has been largely rejected by developers. However, just like everything else, MS's massive weight in the marketpace might just force the system into the open anyway.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/IETF-Nixes-Microsoft-Sender-ID-Approach-36589.html

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is the open-source and open-standards version of the same basic concept. IMO, MS should be working to improve this system, instead of fighting it. But, of course, this is MS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

"everything you didn't want to have to know about spam"
http://spamlinks.net/prevent-research.htm

and I ran across this little item:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/28/pumpanddump_spamscam.html

reffering back to the study from spuriousmonkey's bbc link,
"A fellow on the CISSP mailing list set up a simulation of a portfolio whose strategy was simply, sell short every stock he got a spam about. He 'made' $8K in two weeks."