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I had the unfortunate experience of being on the receiving end of many complaints when Canter and Siegel first burst onto the spamming scene in 1994, so I know a lot about the problems their marketing activities caused. This book gives lots of tips on how to follow in their footsteps to seek fame (well, infamy) and fortune on the Internet, but a much more informative lesson can be drawn by looking at where these morally bankrupt business ideas landed them. Both Canter and Siegel lost their licenses to practice law in Florida after a particularly nasty dispute over some missing client funds. Eventually Canter was disbarred in Tennessee for email related misbehavior, and shortly thereafter, their marriage broke up, according to several news accounts. Many commentators have noted that the moral and ethical problems that marked their careers are a prerequisite to engaging in the destructive practices of email spamming that they advocate in this book. While there may be a chicken-and-egg quality to the question of "does being a bad person make you into a spammer" vs. "does being a spammer make you a bad person," at the end of the day, spamming is morally repugnant, ethically suspect, and now illegal to one extent or another in more than 30 states and more than a dozen countries around the world. Maybe you *can* make some money doing it, but you can also make money engaged in many other illegal and unethical activities. It's not a question of "can," rather it's a question of "should." According to recent news reports, Ms. Siegel reportedly passed away several years ago and Canter is employed writing software manuals. I own a copy of their book, not as a useful how-to guide, but as a reminder that some opportunities come at too high of a price.
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