A lengthy article about infamous spam king "Ronnie the Rodent," owner of Opt-In Marketing.
Opt-In Marketing sends out 80 million e-mails offering vacation packages. For each person who clicks on the e-mail to visit the travel company's website, the company earns $1 – a fee roughly in line with industry norms.
Would it be a good idea to click on the email, so the spammer has to pay Ronnie one dollar? If a bunch of people did that, the spammers might stop using Ronnie. But maybe there's a cap on how much they have to pay Ronnie for each email.
On a related note, do you think the spam-providers really have to pay Overture.com a few dollars every time someone clicks on the links returned from a search for "bulk email"?
