February 27, 2007
Stop buying ink cartridges!
I don't mean for you to stop buying them all together, but just stop buying them online from the spammers. What? It wasn't you? Well someone has to be doing it, right?
It used to be the case that a young (or not so young) entrepreneur would come up with an idea, identify the market, fine tune their product and sell till their hearts content. If the product or idea didn't work, they would go away.
By this logic, spammers who solicit us to buy generic Viagra, cheaper car insurance, Home Depot gift cards and replacement ink cartridges should have faded away into nothingness as the annoyed public deleted their unwanted emails and marked all of these fraudulent marketers as "spam".
So why is it that we are still seeing this coming to our inboxes? Are these businesses the front for an Italian mafia who needs a reputable (but poorly managed) company through which to launder their vig? Is it the vehicle by which young missionaries from large Midwestern states are slowly turning the blue states red through their works? I can't possibly imagine that these are real businesses making a real profit that is supporting the mortgage, cable bill and collectible porcelain Siamese cat figurine habit of a respectable member of society.
So what is it you ask that keeps these people going? It's you! Ok, well not you, you, you and you, but definitely you. Some of us must be out there clicking away and mindlessly buying things online that we didn't ask for. Have you seen a Fuller Brush Man come by your house post 1976? Probably not. Aside from the occasional teenager shilling fake magazine subscriptions Americans have made it clear that we don't want people coming into our homes to try to sell us products unwanted.
So why is it that we accept emails from companies we have not done business with, nor ones that we have at least signed up for a membership/account with? It baffles the mind.
All I can ask is that when you see these emails; delete, mark as spam or if at all possible burn with holy water.
That is all.
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