Jumping To Conclusions

A least a small measure of justice:

A man who sent 850 million junk e-mails through accounts he opened with stolen identities was sentenced to prison Thursday after telling the judge the case against him was overblown and had no victims.

"I obviously regret this whole involvement," Howard Carmack began before being sentenced to 3-1/2 to 7 years in prison on charges including forgery, identity theft and falsifying business records.

Good deal. A drop in the bucket, of course; given that I get about 850 million junk e-mails every day, there's obviously a lot more where he came from. But for once the government did something right.

The strange, depressing thing:

Prosecutors estimated Carmack was making $60,000 to $70,000 annually before his arrest last May.

Assuming that these estimates refer to his spam-related income, I have to wonder what kind of morons there are in this country. I'm not sure who buys "get-rich-quick schemes and sexual enhancers," but more importantly, who on earth buys them based on spam? Are there really people who get one of those Vi@gra emails and think, "Gosh, I was going to go to a doctor, but ooh! Look at this colorful email! I'll just click on this unknown link and send my money to some anonymous person on the internet"?

I've posed this question before on this blog, and I know the answer: obviously there are. If there weren't such people, then spammers would have to get real jobs. But what makes it really puzzling is that, in order to bypass all the filters out there, the spam is becoming more and more abstract; it's harder and harder to figure out what the spammer is selling based on his emails. So who is clicking on the links? Are they all the same retarded elderly people who buy magazine subscriptions because they're sure it will help them win the Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes? Can't be; those people don't use computers. So I give up.

[Anybody who wishes to comment on this entry: please note that if you use the name of any of the "sexual enhancers" that are commonly sold via spam, your comment may be blocked by my spam-catcher.]