Spammage

Like all of you, I presume, I dislike spam. Not the mystery meat (I actually like that somewhat... weird, huh?) but the email type. What is that spam? In my opinion, it is unsolicited advertising. I do not consider it spam if I signed up to get a newsletter and those newsletters turn into advertising. Only the email that I did not sign up to get falls into the spam category. Not that this is all you will find in my "Junk email" folder, there are some of those solicited newsletters there also.

What do I do when I get spam? I look for the "unsubscribe" instructions in them and then follow it. Not always successfully, some "unsubscribe" instructions require that you enter the email address that is receiving it... even though you are simply clicking on a link provided by that spam/email and that data can (and should) be sent to the "unsubscribe" site. I am suspicious of such sites which ask for your email, I suspect they will then pass (sell) that information to other sites which will then send you more spam and do not complete the process. Call me Mr. Paranoid.

I also wonder why some "unsubscribe" sites send you emails (which invariably also wind up in the "Junk email" folder) which confirm you unsubscribed and all too often tell you it will take up to 10 days to take effect. Why? Why should it take more than 10 seconds? Are these not computers? Cannot they link to the subroutines which send out the spam in the first place? Cannot that list be updated immediately?

I had a satellite company once tell me it might take up to thirty days to stop the robo-calls (all of which only confirmed for me that my decision to dump the service was the right one) I was getting daily trying to get me to come back to their service. This was an alleged supervisor telling me this. I informed him that I would tolerate no calls after 24 hours and that each subsequent one would generate a complaint to the "Do Not Call" website. I also informed him that it should not take more than a few seconds to stop the calls, much less a week. The calls stopped immediately

I view spam as disrespect. I dislike disrespect.