Nigerians, Big Penises and Big Breasts

I use a yahoo account to respond to readers. Sadly, it seems that lately, a lot more spam seems to be making it past yahoo’s filters and into my inbox. (I delete the bulk e-mail file without even looking at it.)

(Note to Hormel… in this message, I’m using spam to refer to junk mail, not the canned meat product that seems to be popular in Hawaii and South Korea.)

Spam for me comes in 3 varieties. There’s the so-called Nigerian spam. There’s the “increase your penis/breast size” spam. (I’ve always thought it interesting that one person would get both… imagine if one person responded to both…) Then there’s the “buy this wonder stock” spam. (That’s the order for me – mostly Nigerian, followed by penis/breast size spam, with just a smattering of stock spam – presumably for seasoning.)

We’ve all heard of some fool that responds to the Nigerian spam and is taken for tens of thousands of dollars. But by now I can’t imagine there are that many uninformed people out there that its worth coming up with a new message every so often plus trying to find ways to defeat spam filters. Maybe I’m wrong about that, and this is still an ongoing business for some Nigerians. Or maybe its viewed kind of like a lotto ticket in Nigeria and in big penis/breast land? A lot of people play the lotto, but few hope to win.

One thing that favors the latter hypothesis… pay is probably pretty low in Nigeria, so the cost of lost time may not be that high. Also, the costs are probably pretty low. But still, these costs can’t be zero, especially given yahoo’s and google’s and every other provider’s efforts to defeat spam.

So what do you think? Why do we still get spam?