snow wrote:
On Wed, 21 Aug 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
At 6:04 PM 8/21/96, Gary Howland wrote:
Often I'll ask a stupid question too ("Does your software work in France?"). If more people did this, then they'd have to choose their victims a bit more carefully in the future (assuming of course they're trying to sell something).
As I said in my last message, I don't even do this--I just bounce it back to them. I see no need to "ask questions" (such as "Does it work in France?") to, perhaps, "establish legitimacy." If they sent it to me, I can send it back. Simple.
I think that the purpose of asking a question is to consume _more_ of their time. If they read it, they have to decide if and how to respond. Cousme more of their resources. It might even be interesting to write a script that automatically inserts a silly question (like "does it work in france") and mails it back with the single stroke of a key.
Sure, I bounce it back to them too, by quoting the whole post - but like snow says, I try to consume their time by asking stupid questions. I feel it is important to show a little interest in their product or service in order that they can't tell the genuine replies from the anti-spam replies, which should (hopefully) mean they'll target their spam a little more carefully in future. Gary -- pub 1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22 Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com> Key fingerprint = 0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D 1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06 ^S ^A^Aoft FAT filesytem is extremely robust, ^Mrarely suffering from^T^T