Real Mail Spam Abuses

[CaptKirby]

Spam is something that bothers nearly everyone. It is obviously something that individuals actively try to prevent, as I feel should be their right. What I cannot find any easy information on (google) is if other people are as upset as I am by spam mail that says "OPEN IMMEDIATELY" and is then fucking garbage. If anything should be illegal, it should absolutely be this. They send from different addresses and never with a name on the envelope. It always could be a matter that actually needs attention, since real matters are sometimes sent this vaguely with no name on the envelope (like say a rebate check or car sticker), so one essentially must check it.

No one does this as overbearingly as Time Warner Cable (to me - and the worst part is this probably happens because I am already paying them, but not paying them as much as I could! what an abuse!), but I have seen it from several other companies, particularly insurance companies.

Anyway, maybe no one else will care about this, but I felt it was worth a topic!

EDIT: http://www.directmail.com/directory/mail_preference/ do not mail list, no idea how effectively this actually works though!
https://www.optoutprescreen.com/opt_form.cgi and another optout place.

 

[cantab]

In Britain we have the Mailing Preference Service, http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/

Do you not have something similar in your country?

 

[Vineon]

Theres a garbage can next to my mailbox, I keep letters addressed to me and always throw away everything else instantly.

 

[evan]

you should consider recycling!

 

[TheGreatestT]

My friend usually messes with spammers. It's really fun. Here is a sample of something he sent back to one.

Mr. Borha,

This offer sounds quite too good to be true. Are you sure you know these funds are going to me? Fortunately, I have no real lack of money. I am economically comfortable through my career as a mathematics professor here at St. Mary of the Woods Catholic University, Indiana, USA.
However, if there is any glimmer of truth that even some funds were able to make it to me I would gladly use it for the program that we've initiated to help our students (especially freshmen) gain an advantage in mathematics and start off on the right foot with our tutoring and skill building activities. Math and science as you might know, are important areas that are critical to the modern way of life.
I am a religious man and I believe God is helping us to provide for our community. Thank you for this unexpected offer. It could have not come at a better time. I urge you to look at our website and see if it will help improve the outlook for any economic help if the funds aren't used anyhow.

The online home-page of our student mathematics assistance:

www.studentsuccess.tk

Regards,
A.H.
St. Mary of The Woods University

clicking the link isn't a good idea btw...

 

[shade]

you don't know how many times i've won the nigerian lottery.

 

[CaptKirby]

In Britain we have the Mailing Preference Service, http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/

Do you not have something similar in your country?

There is nothing enforceable, but you prompted me to search about junk mail specifically, which seems to have a couple of possibly helpful things.

Vineon, you really could miss something important that way. I know I have definitely gotten mail that I needed to look at before that I would miss if I always threw away everything that looked like spam.

TheGreatestT, you cannot "mess" with these companies beyond wasting some poor sod's time the way you described. If some grunt somewhere actually does read the letter, then they will throw it out without finishing...why antagonize someone who is already in a low enough position to be doing that sort of stuff?

 

[Vineon]

you should consider recycling!

Never! Lumber and paper is a big (and struggling!) industry here. My contribution is to not recycle. Let's kill some motherfucking trees.

I guess I could start making an effort with plastic.

 

[Broth3r]

If you're gonna spam, at least make it fun for the person receiving.

 

[TheGreatestT]

He talked with this guy for like 3 days before sending that email, to make sure it would indeed be read.

 

[m0o]

Got a mail from Blizzard about a world of warcraft account of mine (never had one lol.) Something along the lines "we have reason to believe that you have tried to sell this account", "we need all your account details to verify...". So retarded, why would blizzard send that to someone with no account and why would they need login details, thats like an admin here asking for password to edit my forums account.

Anyway, I spent 15minutes, what a waste lol but worth it, to write a sob story as if I was 9 years old including fake details on everything. They replied, even had a hint of happiness to it (thought they had scored no doubt) that they were gonna investigate, but wanted to make sure that I did not use my account in any fashion like change its password...

Later got another reply saying I had given wrong details, I said I changed password just to be sure and gave em a new one. This continued for 3 days, why? nevermind, in the end I felt bad for them and had to let them know that I was very much an adult and that I never owned an account to begin with, they felt as upset as I for carrying on with this for several days I think...

but somehow it was worth it. On a related note on treatment of similar people, once made Jehovas witnesses talk to me for several hours about god and their organisation, church, they gave me cookies!!! however it felt mean after that long, especially as the "priest" was with a small child who seemed bored with trying to convert and take all my money. So I had to let them know I was jewish, but I felt insulted because he got pissed and stormed out! :(

which reminds me of the telephone operator/sales person that called, asking me if it was a bad time to call talking about new rates at 7pm, I said "no but please excuse me for a moment while I am cooking my dinner", after 20minutes I returned and the poor sod was still waiting, he actually hung up on me when I informed him of the fact that I wasn't cooking dinner but instead was ******* off out of boredom, I didn't (you will never know) but whatever annoys those people when I am off work is fair in my book.

On the plus side of things, I never get people knocking on my door anymore that shouldn't, nor annoying telemarketers calling, thats a good moral of the story ain't it?

My proudest moment out of all these things... that I like to do, happened some years ago when some albanian woman rang on my door bell with a note written in my language "I need money, I got cancer please give me money I am so so sick, I do not speak any Swedish". I told her in Swedish for 10 minutes about the great benefits of free healthcare (meh they suck) to even illegal immigrants no matter what disease you got at the hospital 2 streets away while clutching my wallet openly, ended it with a "if only you understood any of this maybe you could get treated for cancer, shame, take care BYE!" and slammed the door. I wonder to this day if she knew Swedish and played along hoping for money or really didn't know in which case she must have felt clueless, maybe the person writing her that note could tell her that tho.


Anyone got any good moments like those? like making a vacuum salesman clean your whole house and then kick him out? :)


Spam sucks however OP, whats even worse spam is when you join something, quit it whatever that may be then no matter what you do you can not stop receiving their dumb newsletter or whatever, that is not consider spam as you were required to sign up for it...
(sony, stop spamming me with your shitty electronics please....)

 

[PikaPete]

Here in Korea you don't get spam mail, you just get a load of flyers taped to your door (at least where I live), but they seem to disappear after a couple of days (probably my neightbours feel sorry for the retarded foreigner)

As for Jehovah's witnesses, I don't get them come around since I answered the door wearing nothing but a towel, and when she asked me if she could talk to me about God, I said "only if we can discuss it in bed". She left pretty quick and I haven't seen any of them since....

 

[Thorns]

yeah sometimes I call people out for trying to sell me a mathematics program at the shopping centre. my mum was really furious when I publicly embarrassed them but they haven't come to my shopping centre since and I got some applause