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A Month of Spam: No Help for Sex Life, But It Enlarges the Inbox

Joel Hruska writes on arstechnica:Back in April, McAfee launched an experiment designed as a tribute to Morgan Spurlock's Super-Size Me documentary on eating nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days. Instead of fast food, however, McAfee gathered a group of some 50 volunteers from around the world, and put them on a diet of pure spam.McAfee ran its S.P.A.M. (Spammed Persistently All Month) campaign from April 1 to May 1. There don't appear to be any official details of how the contest was run, but five UK participants in the program were asked to blog about their experience on a daily basis.The five bloggers chose different initial approaches. Danielle started by googling for "free stuff," Dan went for freebie funny clips, and Simon cut straight to the chase by hunting for Viagra. It didn't take long for spam to start trickling in - multiple people report receiving spam within hours of registering at a site - and that trickle steadily grew into first a river and then a flood as the days passed. After 30 days, Simon had collected 7,084 spam emails, Danielle had 2,131, and Vic was apparently just under 2,000. Simon's decision to chase the Viagra market may not have done anything for his sex life, but it did substantially enlarge his inbox.

 

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