March 15, 2004

The man who loves SPAM

From the Wall Street Journal by way of Metafilter: bq. Orlando Soto looks forward each evening to spending time on his home computer after work. But when he logged on one Wednesday night last month, he was disappointed: There were 17 spam e-mail messages waiting for him. bq. "Only 17," he lamented, scrolling through them. "That's a very light day." bq. Mr. Soto routinely comes home to some 150 e-mail pitches, and he loves getting them all. The 45-year-old grandfather opens most of them. He answers spam questionnaires. And he buys stuff pitched in spam e-mail -- again and again. "Everyday people call it spam," says Mr. Soto, who prefers calling it "unsolicited" e-mail. "But I'm open to everything." Unnnhhh -- like DUDE -- you are totally spoiling email for the rest of us. If people didn't buy the crap, SPAM would not have an economic reason to survive. I was out of town for a long weekend and both my work and my home email accounts had several hundred SPAM in them. Cloudmark caught over 80% which is very cool (Outlook and Outlook Express only - software costs about $4/month to run - 30-day free trial - details here) Posted by DaveH at March 15, 2004 2:51 PM