My answer to all three questions:

1) Yes. I often find it humorous and that takes off some of the tension in my life.

2) Yes, I do that often. When people go out of their way to keep me informed about new products and services, the least I can do it is thank them via email.

3) Yes. I recently got a penis enlargement done through a revolutionary new product I heard about on e-mail. I have gone from 6" to 14". I also used another product to find out all the information about a competitor. If it had not been for spam, I wouldn't have entered into a business partnership with a Nigerian prince and neither would I have made a million dollars by lending them my bank account. Oh, and did I mention that I got a great rate on financing my new house?

God, how I love spam. No, I'm not !

Seriously, are you kiddin' me?

Posted by: MadMan on June 8, 2002 04:23 PM

 

That should've read: "No, I'm not Barry Dennis!"

Posted by: MadMan on June 8, 2002 04:27 PM

 

Before I do business with any web site, I Google it with keywords such as "spam," "sucks," "complaints," and "gripes." When I discover a company spams, I e-mail them from a junk account to let them know they lost a potential customer. The companies I've most often almost did business with were web hosts and registrars.

Posted by: on June 8, 2002 04:42 PM

 

I'm a sucker for unsolicited commercial e-mail. I've been on the Internet 6 months and already I've subscribed to 2 college girl web cam sites, bought 4 inkjet cartridges, had 6 penis enlargements and any day now I expect to be making lots of money from home.

Posted by: Mr. Mysterioso on June 8, 2002 04:47 PM

 

There there's the class of really, really stupid spammers who search for web comment forms, then submit their spam there. Not automated. You can tell they actually typed data into each form field by hand.

Posted by: on June 8, 2002 05:49 PM

 

wow, wish my horse was so high. Reminds me of all the people who claim they never click on a banner and have banner blindness.

Posted by: figment88 on June 8, 2002 11:16 PM

 

Yup, that's me. I've probably clicked on a banner at some point in the past 7 years, but I can't recall when it was, probably years ago and by accident, and I rarely pay much/any attention to garish animated boxes that resemble banner ads. More subtle methods of promotion work far better on me, but then I suppose I'm hardly a typical consumer.

I think ISPs need to include in their welcome emails to new users some basic information about things like spam. Novice users often don't realise how spam works or how they need to be careful with their email address until it's too late.

Posted by: Matt Round on June 9, 2002 06:18 AM

 

Since I usually don't load pictures at all, I can't see most banners and don't click on them. I've got nothing about banners though, it's totally not connected to spam. Some of my own sites have banners, and I buy adspace, too. Spam is entirely different. I will never buy anything from any entitiy that has every spammed me, end of story.

Posted by: LKM on June 10, 2002 02:13 AM

 

Hell, no. In fact, I'd rather EAT spam - the gellatinous, yicky processed meat version - than open or read spam.

Posted by: Kelly on June 10, 2002 10:34 AM

 

No way. I delete it immediately. It's crap.

Posted by: BeerzieBoy on June 10, 2002 04:03 PM

 

1) I do read spam. Each time I receive a new load of spam I anxiously wait to see how many will be snagged by my spam filter. I then dissect the successful spams and add more rules to the filter. I receive 300+ spams a week, but only about 3 get through each day. It has become a hobby.

2) I never respond to spam, even when it's on a topic that has relevance to my life at that moment. Is this person sending me e-mail in response to an inquiry I made with them? If not, goodbye.

Posted by: Jacko on June 11, 2002 11:32 AM

 

Here at my office, we're currently being plagued by spam from a web usability consultancy. How's that for irony?

Posted by: Alan Fisher on June 11, 2002 11:34 AM