A Feel Good Spam Story – Really! It started out as nothing particularly new. An Indian spammer sent out a email blast to thousands of people. It was written in a foreign language and was promoting an Indian website. It wound up in the inboxes of people around the world. In this case, the spammer had actually added all his victims to a listserv without their knowledge. The listserv address was purposely hidden. Some people stupidly replied to the spam, demanding the spammer no longer email them – never do this, it does nothing but tell the spammer you read and respond to spam! And of course, some of them clicked “Reply All†to do it - don’t do this either unless you are positive everyone in the distribution list wants to see your message! Of course when the thousands of other people on the list got the demands, they got angry and clicked “Reply All†themselves to add their hostility and threats to the mix. One of the addresses caught up in the spam attack belonged to Starwood Hotels. When they got the demands, they thought they were from people no longer wanting to get their marketing emails, and sent a polite reply using “Reply Allâ€. This enraged some people, who promptly blamed Starwood for the spam attack. A real mess, huh? A spammer does what he does best, people ignorantly click “Reply All†which turns the spam into a huge angry mail loop. Happens all the time, right? Sort of. You see, this time, something really amazing happed. The people caught up in the mess started reaching out to each other instead of yelling at each other. The connections got so popular that they even started a group on Linked In called “Unified By Spam†where they are networking and nurturing new friendships. I’m not suggesting spam as a networking tool, but it sure is nice to see something good come of spam for a change! Source: http://www.allspammedup.com/2012/03/a-feel-good-spam-story-really/
