A private investigator in Florida whose e-mail address was on the October remove list didn't return my phone calls or e-mails. I got a similar lack of response from a professor of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Then Bill Hartman phoned me in response to my e-mail to his ACM.org account.

"I'm not sure why I do it. I know you're not supposed to," said Hartman, chief technology officer for Finite Services, a California software firm.

Hartman reported that he receives around 50 spams per day. If the messages make unsubscribing convenient -- by including remove links, for example -- he attempts to get off the spammer's list. But Hartman admitted the strategy hasn't reduced his overall junk e-mail inflows. As proof, he forwarded several copies of spams advertising Royal-Replicas.com -- including some sent in early December.

Richard Stuart, an engineer with Infineon Technologies based in Maryland, had seen similarly lackluster results from his efforts to unsubscribe from spammer lists.

"Sometimes they stop. Other times, I'm pretty sure they just sell my address to another spammer," said Stuart, who has served on International Telecommunications Union committees drafting standards for modems and DSL equipment. Stuart said he nonetheless planned to stick with the unsubscribing tactic.

"I get so much spam, I can't keep track of it all," said Becky Poor, director of education for a church in Baton Rouge, La. She told me by phone, with some distress, that she received about 200 spams per day. Poor had simply been deleting them until a few months ago, when a co-worker showed her how to unsubscribe. For a while, she dutifully clicked remove links, among them one that was supposed to take her off the Royal-Replicas.com mailing list.

But Poor said she has since given up unsubscribing. The spam just keeps coming, including recent messages from the fake-Rolex spammers.

At that point, I was really no closer to understanding why nearly half a million people -- many of whom should know better -- had tempted fate. Perhaps the same gullibility that compels consumers to buy from junk e-mailers also makes them willing to suspend disbelief about spam remove lists. Or maybe it was simply an act of desperation. Nothing else seems to stop spam, why not try a radical approach?

These people would surely be disappointed by a recent decision from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Earlier this year, the FTC gathered advice from experts about whether to implement a national Do Not Spam registry, akin to the Do Not Call list that has worked to silence unwanted telemarketing calls. In June, the agency announced it was nixing the spam registry idea on the grounds that it would likely backfire and make problems worse.

"Spammers would use such a registry as a directory of valid e-mail addresses. It ultimately would become the National Do Spam List," concluded the agency in a June press release.

I had expected to produce evidence corroborating this conclusion during my brief stint as an underperforming spam affiliate. But I am somewhat shocked to report that, on Dec. 2, I stopped receiving any Royal-Replicas.com spam at my unsubscribed e-mail address. The unthinkable had happened: I had asked a spammer to remove me, and it worked!

I know that my fellow BlackMarketMoney.com affiliates are still spamming away -- my other e-mail accounts are still taking in over half a dozen fake-Rolex spams each per day. But the replica spam suddenly dried up at the removed address. (Now it's just the damned "Cialis soft tabs" ads.)

So should everybody relax, and just click on every "remove me" link they see? I still don't think so, even if these watch spammers gave me what I asked for. For one thing, I don't know why my remove request got results, while those of Hartman, Stuart and Poor haven't been honored. The fact is, rogue affiliates could neglect to scrub their lists. Or worse, they could take the BlackMarketMoney.com remove lists and turn them into a spam list. For all I know, this could just be the calm before a spam storm.

Then I remembered Casper Jones. Perhaps the leader of BlackMarketMoney.com had some worldly opinions to share on the issue. I approached him over AIM using my real name. Could he answer a journalist's questions about remove lists?

Casper didn't respond. A minute later, he signed off. I haven't spotted him online since.

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