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Hiccup in the luncheon meat market

Fed crackdown on spam scam

According to the story, the SEC has suspended 35 of the companies mentioned in those irritating “set to explode!” spams.

The tactic does work, it says. One company saw its shares quadruple briefly after a flurry of spam went out. But it also says it’s unclear whether the companies themselves did the spamming.

It seems obvious that the companies did do the spamming, but I wonder if that’s true. Or will be true from now on. If these are boiler room operations set to snatch a quick profit in the brief period of time a stock is inflated, it doesn’t matter whose company they pump, right? And if they pick someone else’s company, what do they care if it gets a trading suspension after they’re done?

Most of the spam I get isn’t spam, it’s bounce messages from mailer daemons because some asshole spammer used a domain of mine as a return address. They don’t care who they snarl up on their way to a buck (or a yuan or a ruple or a quatloo).

I’m all for killing spam, but this strikes me as a dandy thing to do to a complete stranger. Or a competitor.

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