Spam, spam, spam, spam

"No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

H. L. Mencken, "Notes On Journalism," Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926

A recent study estimates slightly more that 29 percent of Internet users have bought something after clicking on a link in a spam e-mail. That's right - over 29 percent. Our in-boxes are flooded with spam because it's profitable!

The astounding thing isn't just that people are buying things advertised by spam, but that they're buying things like V!agara or R0lex watches and applying for m0rtgages. Would you really trust an on-line merchant that can't even spell the name of their product correctly? Apparently more than one in four people don't have a problem with that.

As much as I hate to say it, it looks like H. L. Mencken might have been right.