Saturday, January 24, 2009

Dealing With E-Mail Spam: A Nevin Barich Blog Experience

Tell me if this is you.

You wake up in the morning and the first thing you do (after going to the bathroom and blurrily looking in the mirror to see how your hair looks after sleeping on it for the past 7-8 hours) is turn on your computer. After your computer loads, you check your e-mail and find messages with the following subject lines:

Save tons of money on car coverage.

Meet single women in your area.

This could be the beginning of the rest of your life.

Take a survey and win a trip to Fiji!


I never understood e-mail spam. I mean, it doesn't actually work, right? No one in their right mind clicks on these things, do they? Nothing against embracing my inner chi, finding a Persian wife or enlarging my penis with a non-surgical procedure, but when was the last time you met somebody who actually clicked on a piece of e-mail spam and had something positive come of it?

If you're the "e-mail spam" people, what is their mindset, do you think? "This is sure to work?" "Maybe I'll get lucky?" "I'm desperate enough to try anything to get someone to buy my product?" "I just want friends?"

I just don't get it.

As I write this, I have the "save tons on car coverage" spam e-mail open on another window. And I confess: I'm tempted to click on it just to see what will happen. But I'm scared of three things:

I'll get a computer virus.

It will lead to more spam (like the time I clicked on a "take a survey and get a $50 gift card to Chilis" pop-up ad. I never did get the gift card. FYI.)

And it will lead me to one of those religious cult sites and my name will be put on some FBI database under "One to watch."

So for now, I will delete this spam and all others that follow it.

And to those spam senders who read this blog, know this:

I will not fall victim to your fiendous plot. I will not click on one of your random ads, buy your stupid product, and be bombarded by more random ads. I am a stone. An oak. Mighty winds and thunder could not break me.

Unless you're offering naked pictures of Angelina Jolie.

Then viruses, ad bombardment and FBI probes be damned.

:-)

And now for this week's:

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE

My fiancee Ramona came across the world's greatest invention ever the other day:

Baconnaise.

It's bacon.

And mayonaise.

Together at last.

Baconnaise.

Now we can all die happy.

www.baconnaise.com

And the world will never be the same.

:-)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A few good tools for dealing with the onslaught, between these 2, Spam is hardly an issue anymore.

1) First off you using Mozilla Thunderbird yet? Get it at http://www.mozilla.org
2) Wanna pay for even better stuff? Look at http://www.cloudmark.com

Another Suburban Mom said...

I just delete and ignore. Also if you have one site for shopping and surveys it keeps the other email clean.

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