Spam Is Dead
Spam And What You Can Do About It
OPEN LETTER TO SPAMMERS
Spam (email ~ postmail ~ faxmail ~ voicemail) is unsolicited (delivered to someone who never asked for it) and has been sent out to multiple recipients at once thus removing it from any category of personalized mail.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
The Good: There is the person like me who is self employed and from time to time sends out a directed individual invitation to someone for the purpose of introducing a service or product (not mass mailed to multiple recipients). It's
called "door knocking" or "cold calling" and I have done it all my adult life, well before email was invented, and because I learned early on, that most of the time you have to actually ask people for what you want because if you don't you
will starve. Asking people for what you want is a good thing, it is direct and open, and the person you query can respond or not. Some doors open, some stay shut.
In defense of my spam (the good spam), I make sure when I send out a
piece of mail that all my contact information and resume links are visible and it is clear why I am writing. I have had very few complaints. Being open and forthcoming and observing a respectful stance generally results in kind. Ideally it
works best if the respondent has heard of me by referral from someone else, but then that would be a step up from a cold call and may not even come under the heading of spam. To aid my goal of growing my network of referrals I have published
my informational letter here:
The Bad: Then there are the people who send out "real" spam... the obnoxious detritus of some marketer's racket. These spammers make no effort to pre-qualify whether the recipients of their unconscious efforts are even appropriate or
alive. This stuff is sent out by people looking for others with less grasp on reality than the spammer has. It's all done by a machine.
Spammers have been told by other self proclaimed marketers that unsolicited mail sent out to a
blind list of addresses will result in fabulous earnings... these claims usually hover in the $10,000 per week range and can be easily confirmed by calling the number printed on the laundromat or telephone pole advertisement right in your own
neighborhood.
Well maybe it works to a degree but I can tell you right now there is no one earning $10,000/week by sending out spam (if it was true they would not be telling you about it) and if anyone is still in doubt about receiving
ten million dollars for simply helping some really nice Nigerian man to liberate his inheritance from some distant land, then by all means send him your bank account information and ID.
The Ugly: The last group of spammers is the most odious and it may never be known who they actually are. They send out digital viruses, worms and Trojan horses to try and disrupt our affairs. What could possibly be the pay off?
Are they juvenile anarchists living in the comfort of their parent's home so depressed by their own delusional thinking that wrecking other people's assets has become the salve that eases their psychic pain? Give us a break, and get some
therapy before you become completely helpless.
But if not the anarchist, is it even more Machiavellian? Is it a conspiracy? Do large companies or governments or other cabals employ people in secret to disrupt the communication network
of the general citizenry so that A) they can sell more anti-anarchist software, or B) so that they can apply more control over the network until we no longer have an unfettered transmission line to our neighbours? Are there powerful elites
who want to keep us from sharing information? If the masses traded notes could they find the strength to rise up and replace the existing controllers? Is that why we live in social chaos? To keep us numb and dumb?
Do The Following:
Get a basic email virus checker that keeps your program and your files free of potential harm.
Learn to distinguish between malevolent attachments and ones that are ok to open. Who sent you the attachment? Is it a simple image or
document file? If you are unsure about the attachment content or the reliability of the sender...don't open the attachment. Ask the sender to resend the document file in plain text in the body of an email or if it is an image make sure it is
a common file type like a jpeg or a gif or a png. Do not open up an exe file... that's an executable file that will interfere with your programs and may result in the loss of your data. Educate yourself and those around you.
Read also
my Email Alias NOTES on preventing spammers from getting your email address.
Open Letter to Spammers "The Bad"
You have bought into some pyramid scheme originating from some individual or company somewhere that touts the promise that if you act as their agent (and rope in others below you to do the same) and send out volumes of email to massive lists
of addresses hawking some momentary flash; then eventually the staggering numbers and sheer weight of statistics will bring you so much income everyday that your job will suddenly become one of finding the time to buy large homes and cars
somewhere in a palm treed and golden shored land where you can sit back and manage your destiny with a remote control.
Ok it's time to wake up. It's never going to happen. Everyone knows that you are a sham hiding behind your
ever-changing Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or offshore temporary email address, and that you are barely able to feed yourself let alone enter into a meaningful relationship of commerce or other endeavor.
Your only fleeting hope is to stumble
upon someone more unconscious than yourself, but your future is already upon you... you remain in the vast pit of shills forever subordinate to the crushing weight of your vapid dream. Wake up! The reality is that your emails get deleted,
placed in blocked sender lists, filtered out and completely ignored. There is so much spam that no one even looks at it! It's CLICK... and it's gone. It goes directly to the dumper.
You and others like you have killed the golden
goose. Anyone dumb enough to even respond to your blatant intrusion will eventually be disappointed by whatever consumer trash or over priced service you are peddling and their disappointment will only serve to make your insubstantial life
even more flimsy, more rinkydink.
BACK TO FAQ INDEX |
