Re: Spamming (Good or Bad?)

[Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>]

snow wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 21 Aug 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
> > At 6:04 PM 8/21/96, Gary Howland wrote:
> > >Often I'll ask a stupid question too ("Does your software work in
> > >France?").  If more people did this, then they'd have to choose their
> > >victims a bit more carefully in the future (assuming of course they're
> > >trying to sell something).
> >
> > As I said in my last message, I don't even do this--I just bounce it back
> > to them.
> > I see no need to "ask questions" (such as "Does it work in France?") to,
> > perhaps, "establish legitimacy." If they sent it to me, I can send it back.
> > Simple.
> 
>      I think that the purpose of asking a question is to consume _more_ of their
> time. If they read it, they have to decide if and how to respond. Cousme more
> of their resources. It might even be interesting to write a script that automatically
> inserts a silly question (like "does it work in france") and mails it back with the
> single stroke of a key.

Sure, I bounce it back to them too, by quoting the whole post - but like
snow says, I try to consume their time by asking stupid questions.  I
feel it is important to show a little interest in their product or
service in order that they can't tell the genuine replies from the
anti-spam replies, which should (hopefully) mean they'll target their
spam a little more carefully in future.

Gary
--
pub  1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22  Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>
Key fingerprint =  0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D  1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06 
^S
^A^Aoft FAT filesytem is extremely robust, ^Mrarely suffering from^T^T