I get dozens of emails every day. I’m on a lot of mailing lists — technical newsletters, leadership blogs, and notices from banks, credit cards, my church, and other valid sources of information. I get advertising from various stores that I frequent (and some that I don’t) … and a large number of emails offering for me to buy Rolex watches, blue diamond-shaped pills, and penny stocks that are going to take off and turn into the next Google!
I’m all for capitalism — people want to make money, so they advertise their product or service and try to lure (I mean attract) customers into purchasing their wares. What I find remarkable is that anyone actually believes that those watches are real, that the pills will actually do anything useful, or those stocks are going to do anything other than go down to zero. The emails are often crude, full of junk text so that it will come up in just about any search, or just so obnoxious that it’s hard to even look at them. How could any reasonable person actually believe them?
Pure business sense says that if this method of “advertising” didn’t work, nobody would waste the time and effort doing it … but how much business can it really bring in? Given that it costs almost nothing to send an email, it wouldn’t take much of a return to cover the costs and still provide some profit; but can it be enough to make a living?
“There’s a sucker born every minute” is a quote that is often attributed to P. T. Barnum (though it was more likely something said about him) — and it definitely applies here as well. Also, “a fool and his money are soon parted” … so unless you want to be known as a ‘sucker’ or a ‘fool’, I suggest that if the email seems odd or too good to be true, just delete it.
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- How Can You Stop Spam Emails? (crlug.org)