Quit spamming me!!!
OK, before everyone here gets my email address and decides to send me cute stories or important virus alerts or petitions to sign, here are the rules:
DON’T!!!
I do not want emails telling me about a child that is missing or cute stories about children outsmarting the teacher or even “important” social petitions that you want me to sign. I do not want lists of amazing facts (a duck’s quack does echo…that one is just stupid). I do not want forwards of any kind. I do not want emails where I have to scroll down for 20 minutes before I get past the header with a million email addresses in it.
See that last one…that is key. Most of these emails are scams to harvest email addresses from the internet. Some unscrupulous people start these so that they can have your email address and when you forward it to me it doesn’t matter if I delete it because you sent it out to 10 of your friends with my email address in the header and they forward it so I get porno email anyway.
I DO NOT WANT PORNO EMAIL!!!
Here is how it works:
1) some jerk sends out an email scam (or just a funny tale) to 5 friends. (5 people have it)
2) those 5 people think its clever and email it to their entire address book (let’s just imagine that they each have 5 people in their address book…now 30 people have it…the original 5 and the 25 others.)
3) now those 25 friends forward it (125 +25 + 5 now have it…155)
4) those 125 friends now have it (625 + 125 + 25 + 5 = 780)
This can happen all in one morning and most people have more than 5 email addresses in their address books.
Now someone in that list is going to accidentally hit “Reply all” instead of just reply and so the original person is going to get that entire list of emails in the header.
Now this guy sends out 780 emails and in return gets thousands upon thousands of email addresses.
Ever wonder why you get porn emails or African millionaire scams? Well, its because you and your friends forward crap to each other.
If you want to email me do not send an email to me and someone else…make mine exclusively to me, do not forward me clever stories, do not forward me virus alerts.
Just for fun let’s look at the number of email addresses the spammers can get.
If there are 5 email addresses in the address books affected:
1st generation: 5
2nd generation: 30
3rd generation: 155
4th generation: 780
5th generation: 3905
6th generation: 19530
If there are 6 email addresses in the address books affected:
1st generation: 6
2nd generation: 42
3rd generation: 258
4th generation: 1554
5th generation: 9330
6th generation: 55986
If there are 10 email addresses in the address books affected:
1st generation: 10
2nd generation: 110
3rd generation: 1110
4th generation: 11110
5th generation: 111110
6th generation: 1111110
That is more that one million email addresses harvested…
Here is a question for you:
If no one ever had sex before or outside of marriage, how many cases of AIDS would there be?
or
If no one ever forwarded a junk email, how many email viruses would be flying around the internet?
Linked to:
The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns
The Conservative Cat
Right Wing Nation
The Uncooperative Blogger
On 22Jan06 at 1405 Well Seasoned said:
… and if nobody read your blog, how worthwhile would it be?
While I have never spammed you … and detest spam … be glad that you get enough attention to be worth spamming. While I agree with everything you said, I do not agree with the way you said it. I doubt if many of your fans do either.
Regards -
On 22Jan06 at 1412 Mark said:
Well Seasoned., I’m not catching your drift. I was simply pointing out that junk emails are not appreciated and should not be forwarded to everyone in your mailing list. They are simply a tool to generate mailing lists for more junk email. This has nothing to do with this blog or its worth.
On 22Jan06 at 1420 Brian Bonner said:
I will add one more item of interest, if you are going to send an email to more than one person, and I do it all the time, use the BCC (blind carbon copy) function in OE. To see this option reply to a message, when that window opens, go to view, and then check show all headers. There will now be a BCC window permanently under the CC window. This functions hides all other emails from the recipients.
On 22Jan06 at 1424 Mark said:
Excellent point, Brian.
I’m sure you aren’t sending “Bill Gates will give you $25 if you forward this to 10 people” emails though, right. ;^)
On 22Jan06 at 1437 Brian Bonner said:
That would be correct Mark, I was just trying to give people an option for sending emails to multiple people, not garbage emails, without exposing other people’s email address to everyone. hehe