Spam - It's not just for dinner anymore!

For some reason over the past several weeks I have been getting way more spam email than I used to. It used to be several a day and I would go into the spam folder in Gmail and delete a dozen or so every week or two. Now I'm getting about 50-60 spam messages a day. Obviously someone has gotten a hold of my email address. I am very thankful for the analytics in Gmail which are very good at sorting the spam from the real email.

But it got me to wondering a couple of things. How can this be profitable for whatever companies are sending this? Who in their right mind responds to these emails that are so obviously not from who they pretend to be. The spelling is bad; grammar is bad; often bizarre emojis in the subject line; or really crude or gross things. There are all kinds of clues that these are not legitimate emails. 

So who responds? Is it very young kids or senile seniors or mentally challenged individuals? How can the senders make money? Or is it just access they are looking for? I seriously don't understand it.

On the other hand, I think it would be interesting and kind of humorous to respond to some of these and see what happened. Not to send them money, but to see how much more spam would be generated. Obviously I don't want to do that on my own account - or on any computer that I valued as I am sure that would open me up to spyware or viruses or whatever. But it would be an interesting experiment... For someone else.