Stupid Experiment Watch: 50 Volunteer to be Spammies

From the complete-waste-of-time file comes news that Internet security firm McAfee has convinced 50 people to spend a month clicking on pop-ups, signing up for promotions and responding to spam e-mail on computers with no filters installed.

Participants from Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States have all been provided with clean laptops and new e-mail addresses.

“Cybercrime won't go away without solving the problem of spam,” said Dave DeWalt, chief executive officer for McAfee, in a statement. “McAfee is leading the fight against cybercrime and spam. This experiment will raise awareness of the problem by showing that a 30-day diet of spam is bad for your online health.”

Actually, Dave, cybercrime isn’t going away period. As long as there’s cyber, there will be cybercrime. Moreover, it isn’t the e-mail addresses or laptops that are important. It’s the credit cards. Did you issue 50 of those?

OK, can anyone guess what’s going to happen? … Anyone? Anyone?

Some penis pills will be shipped. Some dialog with Nigerian scammers will be started. Loan applications will be sent. Questionable sweepstakes will be entered Porn will be viewed … heeyyy. Wait a minute. Oh, never mind. E-mail addresses will be sold. Spam volume will snowball. Viruses will be caught. Computers will crash.

This scheme is reminiscent of that idiot in the film Super Size Me who ate nothing but McDonalds for a month, had heart palpitations and gained almost 25 pounds. Well, what the hell did you think was going to happen, there, bub?

What’s that you say? McAfee’s spam experiment is just a cheap publicity stunt aimed at showing what happens when computers aren’t protected by Internet security software? And that I’m a complete sucker for falling for it?

Yeah, whatever. This experiment ought to last about a week.