I received two email messages today from other hapless internet users, in response to spam messages they received. I wrote up a nice reply to both of them, explaining that spammers forge email addresses and I did not send the spam myself (the spam messages had random email addresses in the From field, with my domain name).

Upon further investigation, they seem to have both received the same stock "strong buy" spam for some Chinese pharmaceutical company. Looking at today's stock price, the spam appears to have worked. With the stock price rising 100% in just one day of trading, clearly this has made somebody a serious amount of cash. It's impossible to say whether this spam message alone influenced the stock this much, but I don't see any other recent news releases, or any other reason for the stock to jump like that.

If people continue to react posivitly to spam they receive, creating huge profits for those behind the scenes, there is precious little hope for spam to go away.