In the Headlines

Spam: Profits from your personal information

All those email ads that you receive everyday are mostly SPAM. Some spamers are honest business people, while others are dishonestly using the internets power to send millions of useless ads to millions of people that do not even want any of their services. That is because a significant number of spam entrepreneurs are not interested in whether anyone buys their products. Rather, they benefit from other spammers by using pyramid schemes that rely on "recruits" to expand their spam empire.

Most spammers make money selling personal e-mail addresses along with real names in some cases to other spammers, who then sell those same names and addresses....the cycle goes on. When you click these spam emails, you are usually asked to fill out a form. This is their means of data collection. In turn, every time you answer the spam, your name is re-inserted onto the spam-database and sold for an even higher amount because you took the "bait" once already.

Only around to 20 percent of email transfets are legitimate offers from people selling real products. Aproximately sixteen percent of spam are scams. Only the spam offers for pornography consistently deliver what is offered in the ad. Even the pornography business makes their own attempt by installing software known as spyware on your hard drive that records your surfing preferences, then displays the appropriate ads on your screen.

The government implemented a new law to be able to "fine" the people responsible for the mass spam ad campains that are flooding the internet. The new "rule" to follow is to have a contact link on the email that truely connects to the person or organization responsible (They just found a way to benefit financially from the spammers.).

Shawn A. Conway