There's been a lot of talk about it lately and a couple of my friends received those type of transactions as well but I haven't so far, maybe because I very rarely touch altcoins so I am not the good target (I guess they look for very active addresses).
The scammers surely have some sort of list of addresses that are actively monitored. When such an address makes a transaction, the address poisoning scam follows soon after. Sometimes just a few seconds after the genuine transaction. It must be an automated service.
At first this tactic looks incredibly far fetched and not very likely to work as who would copy his own address from transaction history (that never even crossed my mind) but then again when I thought of all the ways people lose money I wouldn't be surprised if some fall for this, no matter how stupid it may seem.
A few weeks after this new scheme became known, I read a report that mentioned that $1.5 million had already been scammed that way. It's even more now. Considering that other scams bring in hundreds of millions sometimes, it doesn't sound like a lot. Still, it proves that people are falling for it. It's enough for the scammers to continue looking for new or old victims.