Have you ever purchased anything based on a spam email?

Question

We all know how infamous spam emails are in today's internet age. It is estimated that 40% of all emails sent each day is spam (over 12 billion!) and that about 8% of people actually buy something from a website advertised in spam emails. 

There are many reasons why someone would send spam, including trying to sell reputable products, trying to sell non-reputable products, for phishing or fraudulent purposes, and even just to see how many mailboxes that they can reach.

However, my question is why would anyone buy from someone who uses spam tactics to sell a product? At the very best, you are helping to contribute to the reason spam exists and works. At the worst, you could be ripped off, or sold fake or dangerous products!

Have you or someone you know ever purchased from a spam email? And if so, what made you decide to do so? And what is your normal policy toward spam? Do you have an anti-spam filter and use it? Do you ever reply to spam emails?

As a person that works in computers all day, I would like to here other people's thoughts on this.I get almost 300 spam emails a day, 99.9% of which are immediately filtered out and discarded so I never even see them.

spiritedrinoa · Accepted Answer

I don't purchase things from spam, as I too am fairly internet savvy (and very security paranoid, especially after my World of Warcraft account somehow got hacked...)

However, I work in finance, and it's not uncommon that my colleagues will see clients bring in checks along with printouts of emails about a lottery in the UK that they won, or about someone that they're trying to assist in bringing money over, or the money they inherited from their unknown relative in Zimbabwe. 

It's very sad that people get these and think they're legit.

What do I do personally? I use gmail and hotmail strictly, and when I sign up for online accounts, I use my hotmail (which serves as my "I know they're going to send me junk mail" account). Hotmail does a pretty good job of filtering, but I do skim the junk mail, just to make sure there's nothing that I recognise (offers from a company or organisation I WANT to see, or from a friend that my email doesn't recognise). But more often than not, a quick skim allows me to then tell hotmail to delete everything.

When something gets into my inbox that I don't want there, I'll drag it to the spam box to prevent them from continuing to spam my inbox. If it's something from a company I know is legit and I just don't want their mailings, I'll unsubscribe (and hope that they pass that along to anyone they sold my email address to).

Anonymous · Answer

Yes. Spams are unsolicited mails. Most of them are scams too. However, once in a while you come across something that makes you respond to them and they turn out to be real. I have once or twice.

lorie v · Answer

No I'm just too chicken  I never open these emails

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Have you ever purchased anything based on a spam email?

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