a can of spam
I just want to give a brief update to the class about the outcome of my unwise involvement with freebies. Right after the holiday and I went back to work and there were at least 30 spam e-mails in my inbox. Of course, there were from different survey companies, magazines, mortgage or credit cards, and even more e-mails offering freebies. More e-mails followed the day after.
I have been busy in unsubscribing all these e-mails in the past few days. The tricky part is that there are actual 2 links that I have to unsubscribe, one is the link from the advertising company, and the other is from the actual merchant who makes the offer. I have to make sure unsubscribe both if not there is still high chance for me to get endless spam.
After all, my personal recommendations are not to try getting the freebies. They are NOT free and you actually pay more than what you get.
posted by Junko @ 6:26 PM
9 Comments:
it can often be difficult, and totally frustrating, to identify where you can unsubscribe to these 'services' ... good luck cleaning things up!
Actually, I have been hearing advice that DO NOT unsubscribe these spam emails, the reason being: the more you unsubscribe, the more spam you get, because every time you click that little "unsubscribe" button, you are releasing your email information, including the important infomration that you are actually using this email account, to more spam companies or persons. The spam compaines are always selling these information.
I am not sure if this is true or not, but since I got this advice from a few system admin people, I have stopped unsubscribing these spam, and simply let the email service provider like Yahoo! to handle them as spam or bulk emails so they can be automatically blocked or deleted.
Stopping spam -- mission impossible?
Coming Soon! There are talks about a Do Not SPAM Act that will be much like the Do Not Call Registry. A Web site where you can register your E-mail address with the government and advertisers will not be allowed to send you E-mails. There are several advantages and disadvantages to this idea.
Advantages:
- People will be happy that they will not have to sort through numerous junk E-mails
- Marketers will be happy that people's convidence in the E-mail medium will be (hopefully) restored
Disadvantages
- Permission-based E-mail subscriptions may be affected: e.g. The Daily Dilbert to which I subcsribe may be filtered out
- Related to the above item, markets that are actually sending permission-based E-mail will need to find a way to get their message through to willing customers
Obviously, many other advantages and disadvantages exist, but you can see how this act could help and harm the E-mail marketing world.
Recently, I received an email from a company gathering information for Wharton regarding my educational experience. I completed the survey and was told that thay would send me an umbrella for my time, of course I never received it. While this is not a big deal, I feel like I was lied to. I have also heard that unsubscribing to spam can cause you to receive even more spam. Hopefully things will work out for you.
Recently, I received an email from a company gathering information for Wharton regarding my educational experience. I completed the survey and was told that thay would send me an umbrella for my time, of course I never received it. While this is not a big deal, I feel like I was lied to. I have also heard that unsubscribing to spam can cause you to receive even more spam. Hopefully things will work out for you.
I sympathize with you about the spam. I too have heard that by merely responding to spam, you will inevitably receive more of it because then "they" know you have a legitimate working email address and will send you more. Simply deleting all spam before even opening it can also cause you to unintentionally delete legitimate emails. It is all very frustrating.
I also want to add that, like Tammy, I also completed an online survery regarding the Wharton experience and was promised an umbrella for my time but never received it. The umbrella was the only reason that I decided to complete the survey and I never received the free gift. Also very frustrating.
For what it's worth, those offers of sending you something as compensation for completing a survey, etc usually take a LONG time to arrive. I wouldn't feel cheated quite yet...
tammy's umbrella...same happened to me, it must by that marketing people at Wharton got into the umbrella business. :)
Thank everybody for the imput and tips. I stopped unsubscribing. I signed up for the DO NOT SPAM. I have limited e-mail promotions send to me anyway.
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