Friendly spam - stop it!
I’m sure most of us have friends who at least at one time sent all kinds of forwards to their entire address book. And the frustration keeps building until you can’t hold it any longer, and tell them to stop.
It might be a good idea to tell them right away, but in a nice way.
Anyway, I found an article about this, and read this to the end. There’s a punchline down there…
(At least MY mother sure isn’t that gullible! Nor would I do something like that to her. Nor would she do something like that to me. Geez!)
Update December 26, 2005:
Jay Allen had a post about this issue, and got some really good responses, including:
1) Reply to the e-mail, with one word added to the top of the message: unsubscribe
2) Give them another e-mail address they’re allowed to send forwards to, and reserving your main one for important mail.
3) Sign them up for all the annoying mailing lists you can find.
And I’ll add one of my own:
4) Completely flood their inbox with every annoying, big mail you can find. Get THEM to ask for mercy!
December 1st, 2005 at 1:34 pm
My arguement for friendly spammers is that they send so much unimportant stuff that when they do send out an important (not forward) email they may be ignored. I know I ignore relatives like that, even my Dad.
But some people really do like getting forwards of interesting/funny junk. They are likely the same people who like sending them. They probably don’t get a lot of email already. Otherwise they would realize how much time it would take to read through it all.
December 1st, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Those who like getting those forwards could just find a mailing list that caters to their particular tastes.
And yeah, I had to tell a friend just a few days to stop sending me forwards. I told her I’d love to keep in touch with her, but if she was going to continue sending me all that junk, I’d have to block her, which would mean she’d have to use a second e-mail address to reach me.
December 2nd, 2005 at 9:17 am
I have politely suggested to one close friend who frequently spammed (friendly spam or is it friendly fire?) that he should take to blogging which will give him wider audience for his articles. I even offered to setup one from him.
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:36 pm
And I suggested to a friend that she should set up a mailing list that people could subscribe to for her forwards. And of course, they could unsubscribe as well
Anyway, Yahoo groups is relatively newbie friendly.
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:02 pm
Friendly spam isn’t
I found an interesting article via Spam Huntress about those annoying “friendly spammers”.
December 19th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
Hi, I bookmarked this site. I’m so sick of forwards, and the people who get all defensive when they have been shown that forwards are junk. I’m tired of supposed chat lets that accept posting of chain mail. I haven’t found one chat list that disallows them except for my own. Other lists that don’t allow them usually turn out to be lists I’m otherwise not interested in because of the subject or exclusivity.
January 9th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Oh this is a source of misery. I used to get a lot of these from one particular person but I managed to in the end get them to stop without upsetting them. My person favourite friendly spams are..
1) How well do you know ? Answer these 196 questions to see how well you know .
2) A miracle. (A phoney-baloney story about how some kid was in a coma and their parents were run over by a car that had been stolen by some dogs but, in the end an angel appears or something and everything is fine. If i wanted cheesy ‘motivational’ crap I’d get a job in a Hallmark store or just listen to more chart music.)
3 Send an email to this kid who has cancers on his cancer. Please pray for him.
I’m just glad I don’t get this crap anymore.
May 26th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
I usually just reply with a link to the relevant article on Snopes.