junk e-mail

Today's pet peeve is JUNK EMAIL. I hate it. However, I don't consider all unsolicited mass mailings equally vile. If it seems to be targeted at my specific interests (e.g. writing, editing), then I don't mind as much. The worst type of junk email is the kind with a completely contentless subject header, like "hi!", the type that masquerades as personal email. I'm forced to open the email to see what the message is actually about (another of my pet peeves is blank subject headers, but I'll leave that for another day).
My current most disliked junk email is the one with the subject header "Is Your Website A Secret?"...please tell me I'm not the only one who gets this. I get a zillion copies of this (well maybe not a zillion) because of all the email aliases I have published on my Inkspot website (editor@inkspot.com, webmaster@inkspot.com, and so on). HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK (this shows you what an exciting life I lead): finding out that Shopper's Drug Mart is carrying those packages of mini chocolate bars again...probably because Hallowe'en is next month. SOMETHING TO TRY IF YOU'RE BORED ONLINE: Try different domain names and see where you go e.g. "http://www.blabla.com" where blabla is a word of your choice. If you find anything interesting or surprising, please let me know and I might post it in my blatherings. UPDATE: The apartment across the hall is still empty. SCHEDULESTUFF: I'm going to NYC with my friend Cathy this weekend, so no blatherings during that time though I might succumb to temptation and post to the blatherchat from one of the cyber-cafes near Times Square.
TODAY'S SITE: IEMMC - Formed in
May of 1997 as a trade association dedicated to promoting the
responsible and ethical use of direct email as a marketing tool on the
Internet. You can register your email address to get it removed from a number of bulk emailer lists. I registered mine last night; I'll let you know know if it seems to have any effect. UPDATE: Steve Brinich reports that the IEMMC site is a hoax, and actually confirms email addresses to be added to junk email lists. (!!) Forget the previous site of the day announcement. New site of the day: Spam Fighting Links. One of the best articles is by Gary McGath and is called Self Protection on the Net.