Our friend Rudy recently learned first-hand why it’s always best to use a current, opt-in list for email marketing.

Think you might need a refresher?

• Is My List Ok to Use in MailChimp?
• How To Grow Your Email List in 3 Easy Steps
• When Email Addresses Go Stale
• Warning Signs That Your Client is Spamming – Free Guide

We all know SPAM isn’t just limited to email anymore, especially if you’re a frequent Twitter user. And although Twitter has gotten better in its SPAM catching and annihilation practices, SPAM still manages to show up in the darndest places. Like next to the live stream of your TechCrunch event, let’s say.

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Mailman Steve Padgett, age 58, stood before a Federal Court judge recently to receive his sentence. The crime? Delaying and destroying the very mail he was supposed to be delivering– third class mail, or more commonly, the JUNK.

This spring, authorities were contacted by a utility worker who noticed what appeared to be an excessive amount of mail piled at Steve Padgett’s home in Raleigh. When postal authorities went to investigate, they discovered third-class mail stacked in Padgett’s garage and buried in his lawn.

According to Padgett’s attorney Andrew McCoppin, it wasn’t a conscious stand against waste or a junk mail protest that spurred the mailman to hold onto the mailers. Rather, it was the inability to meet the demands of a job in a growing part of the county while contending with heart problems and complications from his diabetes.

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Is your spam folder surprisingly empty this morning? This might be why:

Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline (Washington Post)
“We looked into it a bit, saw the size and scope of the problem you were reporting and said ‘Holy cow! Within the hour we had terminated all of our connections to them.”

And have you ever wonder how spammers make money anyway? And how much?

Study shows how spammers cash in (BBC News)

“After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted…the response rate for this campaign was less than 0.00001%…these conversions would have resulted in revenues of $2,731.88—a bit over $100 a day for the measurement period,” said the researchers.”

So how do spammers send so many emails, anyway? If they can do it, there must be some legal loophole allowing anyone to do it, right? So that means we can all buy emal lists and blast out spam. Right?

Um, no. Spammers have to hijack computers to do their dirty work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet (scroll down to “Formation and Exploitation”)

If spammers can get away with this, then so can I, right?
They don’t. And no, you can’t:
Authorities Shut Down Spam Ring (NYtimes.com)

Ken Magill reports on a disturbing story of a spammer who escaped from prison and killed his family:

http://directmag.com/magill/0729-suicide-spammer/index1.html

Includes interesting back story about a vendor that once worked with that spammer.

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