It seems so obvious now but I never realised this on my own. I suppose the take-away lesson is that there is an art to even the most (seemingly) hare-brained schemes.
I can't see that they'd continue doing it if they didn't get some sort of result.
At the least, a very small number of valid email addresses, an even smaller number of postal mailing addresses, and a vanishingly small number of financial interactions.
I have read in local news about few people falling for some of the Nigerian scams. The issue is that only some cases come out, others feel it better to hide their foolishness and not report.
It's like all those stupid adverts you see on TV for mega-extreme-fitness-workout or call-meet-super-sexy-local-girl. Always wondered who would actually but this rubbish or call those stupid premium rate numbers, but the very fact there are so many of them must mean someone does!
"for mega-extreme-fitness-workout or call-meet-super-sexy-local-girl"
That's actually a little different. When people are desperate they are willing to go with emotion instead of rationality. That's why they travel overseas for miracle cures even though rationally what they are doing doesn't make any sense at all.
There is also the greed factor which is somewhat similar and why people go for "to good to be true" things if the price is low enough.
There is a blogger who I will not name that has chosen to go with godaddy $9 hosting for his quite popular blog (he used to pay $100 for a VPS or something like that) and he truly believes that gd will give him unlimited everything at that price point just because that's what the site says. While he is not particularly savvy in terms of hosting and technical things (by his own admission) his greed (if I can call it that) makes him overlook and ignore the obvious.
I'm sure someone can point out the exact psych principles that are involved here.
Those ridiculously too-good-to-be-true hosting deals are awesome if you've got a blog that nobody ever reads. The instant one of your posts goes viral, expect your page to be unceremoniously shut down with no call or email to you. Which is of course the worst possible time for it to be shut down-- while it's on front pages of social aggregators and such.
Source: personal experience (Bluehost, not GoDaddy)
Questioning both the GP's cases and your's require not only critical thinking but also a little domain knowledge.
Reading "unlimited bandwidth" doesn't imply that's not the case unless you know from experience or hearsay that there are heavy conditions.
Same thing with "lonely girls in your down", how am I to know that's not true on face value in this particular area and that rather it's a common come-on.
I think we like to think optimistically and assume people mean what they say in general.
Scamming is not remotely a hare-brained scheme. It's an incredibly reliable method for getting rich by exploiting the gullible if you know how to do it. That "if" is a huge if. And there's the whole ethics thing.
And gullible needs to be emphasized. A lot of people seem to think scammers only get the greedy, which is not true. For example, how are fake charities targeting the greedy? Or the grandparent scam? [1]
