At McAfee we spend a lot of time preaching about the dangers of opening unsolicited emails. "Don’t do it!" we say. "Believe us, you’ll be sorry!" we warn. "Really, really sorry!" In response to these endless admonitions, some of you mavericks out there might be tempted to ask "Oh really? What exactly will happen if I do?"

This month we’re going to find out. For 30 days we changed our tune and sent 50 volunteers around the world on a mission to click on anything they could get their mouses on (Or is it mice? Does anyone really know?). A notification that you won the lottery? Sure, open it. (And congratulations, by the way!) You were chosen randomly for free Lasik surgery? Wow, how lucky! A fire sale on Cartier and Rolex watches? Why not buy one of each?

Why the temporary about-face? Because people out there are still opening spam emails. A lot of people. "Who in the world are these people?" you might ask. "Don’t they know any better?" That’s the million-dollar question, because no one is going to step up and admit to buying Viagra or a fake designer watch online, much less a "male enhancement" product. But people all over the world are clearly responding to these messages, because there wouldn’t be so much spam out there if it weren’t making someone a lot of money. And while a tiny percentage of spam might be legitimate advertising, for the most part it has become a gateway for cybercriminals who want to steal your money. In other words, spammers are bad people. My esteemed colleague Rajesh Venkat discussed these financial drivers a few issues ago in "Pirates of the Web," and now we’re using real scenarios to take his argument beyond a warning and unmask spam for the criminal activity it is.

So for 30 days we asked our volunteers to do what we’ve always told them not to: Take a brand new laptop with no anti-spam software installed, and click, click, click away. We even asked them to blog about their experiences, adding a touch of reality TV to our fight against cybercrime. We’ll clean the laptops up for them after the experiment ends, so think of it as the digital equivalent of being able to eat anything you want for a month, and then having any weight you gain disappear at the end. Not a bad deal.

A 10-country experiment may seem a bit extreme, but we’re serious about raising awareness of the dangers of spam—on a global and local level. As a security company, we can’t arrest spammers, or even stop them from attempting to send spam. But what we can do is show our customers what we’re protecting them against. Spam is no longer just a nuisance, and as we explained in our recent SAGE report, "One Internet, Many Worlds," it’s not a U.S., German or U.K. problem either. It’s an "all of us" problem that can wreak havoc on your computer and your bank account.

It’s been quite a month so far, and we expect to open a lot of eyes when we release our findings from the experiment this summer. Stay tuned.