Deep Undercover, a Reporter Learns that Unsubscribing from Spam Works!   12/15/2004 - 1,391 views, 1 Comment

So, upon receiving the gazillionth piece of spam advertising fake Rolex watches, McWilliams decided to do what any righteous reporter would do: he decided that if you can’t beat them, join them - but only to beat them.

McWilliam’s dug deep and discovered that one Casper Jones, the “proprietor” (and I use the term loosely) of BlackMarketMoney.com, was behind the vast majority of the current wave of Rolex spam. Now mind you, Jones isn’t sending the spam himself. That would be too much work, and too dangerous. No, Jones runs an affiliate program for spammers, who in turn send out the spam which advertises (or, as we in the biz say, “spamvertises”) the fake Rolex watches.

McWilliams applied (yes really!) to join Jones’ ranks, and after a false start, and a near miss, he found himself accepted in to the royal order of Royal-Replicas.com spammers.

However, things were not all that he expected. Much to his astonishment, McWilliams discovered that Jones actually keeps a “do not spam” file, containing all of the email addresses of all of the victi..er..recipients who have clicked on the “remove me” link. And contrary to McWilliams’ expectations, Jones program strongly advises their affliates to lather, rinse, repeat, and above all scrub daily, and remove any of those email addresses from any list before sending out a spam run.

McWilliam’s knew this was the real deal, because he had first clicked on the unsubscribe link in one of the replica watch spams he had received, at a little known address, and darned if that address didn’t appear in Jones’ “do not spam” list, and darned twice if McWilliams didn’t stop receiving the watch spam at that address!

Whodda thunk?

Now, does this mean that you should start clicking on all unsubscribe links in all of the spam you receive?

Well, as the saying goes, youse roll the dice, youse take your chances.

You can read Brian McWilliam’s excellent piece in Salon. If you aren’t a Salon subscriber you can get a day pass by first watching an ad which they will present to you. McWilliam’s article is well worth the price of admission, in Aunty’s opinion. Go here to read the article.