[Teresa Edgerton]

I wonder how many books the viral marketing people sell by spamming really high-traffic sites, though? At a less specialized forum than this one, where thousands of people visit a day, how many people will read these messages before they get removed, people who are gullible enough to be favorably impressed by them?

Because I wonder about spam in general -- email in particular. All the people who try to get you to open their letter by pretending it's about something else altogether, or who get past your spam filters by deliberately misspelling words or on some other pretense? Isn't this directing their ads at the very people who don't even want the product? And mortgage lenders in particular. They expect you to have important financial dealings with them, when they've only attracted your attention in the first place by a trick as clumsy as it is dishonest? Yet someone must be responding favorably, or why do advertisers keep doing these things?