The Things Spammers Believe – A Tale of 300k Imaginary Friends

It finally happened. Today, I added the three hundred thousandth (yes, 300,000th) spamtrap address to my greytrapping setup, for the most part fished out of incoming traffic here, for spammers to consume.

After reading the article, it looks like spammers believe anything that looks vaguely like an email address, is an email address, and that all email addresses are worth sending crap ads to.

I don't find this satisfying. Spammers must believe other things that motivate them to do such sloppy, harmful things.

My current idea is that spammers don't actually make money, that effectively all email ads get thrown away. Spammers are doing it because they're psychopaths, to cause pain, stress and anger. Money doesn't enter into it.