Are advertisers THAT desperate?

I recieved an email the other day with the subject title "re-" followed by the title of a post I had made a couple of weeks before in another forum. I opened it, thinking it was from somebody on that forum and it was an advertisement that had absolutely nothing to do with the title. It seems to me to be too unique to be a coincidence, and I could be wrong but I doubt it. When I went back and looked, the email address it was sent to only matched the first four letters of my correct email address. The advertisement was for an electronic unit that would enable me to recieve cable and satellite stations "free", which I imagine is illegal. They cleverly put in a disclaimer that you should notify your local cable company if you are using it, which seemed tongue in cheekish to me. Is this common or a coming trend? Has anyone else seen anything like this? How can someone send an email with the incorrect address and yet you still recieve it?

I've seen it a lot of times. Advertisers will use any means by which to get their message out. I was just at another forum at Bicycling.com and saw a post by a user that suggested it was for "health, fitness and good lifestyle". It was a dating service. Sheesh.

I've seen ads being sent out in a variety of security lists and the ads range from relavent (related to security stuff) to irrelavent (redo your mortgage).

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How can someone send an email with the incorrect address and yet you still recieve it?

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The source never has to be a valid email address. Only the destination needs to be valid. And, sometimes they can use BCC to send a message.

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Originally posted here by MsMittens
Advertisers will use any means by which to get their message out.

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Sad but true... All of us may view these ads as annoying, waste of time, etc., but to the advertiser, for as much of this crap as they send out to as many people, if they get a few clicks of interest it is worth it to them.. There are some people who actually fall for this stuff, check links, may even purchase something.. It has gotten absolutely ridiculous these days with the methods that advertisers will use to get their crap out...

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A few years ago it was the "DOT COMS" that paid for the free things on the internet.
(eg: 1 cent paid each time their ad was seen) This is how Yahoo get paid

Now they are "DOT GONES" ..... advertisers are stooping to some pretty low tricks to get their message across. Then along came spam.

Before I get flamed.....each ISP pays their portion of the internet (to the next supplier) We then pay our ISP for our portion.

ADD's r bad........... but just use a pop-up stoper...... this helps alot :D
I use the Google tool bar2 it is gr8...... with nice features 2
if u want it goto http://www.google.com
& download it............ :dam this looks like an ADD : :P