[OT] HELP!

And this leads to an etiquette question I don't have a satisfactory
answer to.


I run into an old friend, someone I haven't seen in ages. Or maybe it
is a new friend. We exchange email addresses. I look forward to
coresponding a little news.


She sends a joke. Usually it is something old and tired. Only rarely
is it something I haven't seen before or think is funny. Either way,
there's never a personal note. I have joke books if I want jokes. I
send a note telling some friendly news I think might be of interest and
saying that I don't care for jokes much. The jokes continue. I ask
questions of a friendly nature, try to start a conversation. No
personal answers. I hint a little more and finally come out and say not
to send me jokes. That's when the inspirational messages, the political
petitions and urban legends begin.


Months can go by of being on this person's mailing list, and all I get
amounts to spam. Still, I'm reluctant to delete without reading when I
see the message line is from someone I know. I'm afraid of deleting it
the one time she sends something written especially for me.


Finally our old ISP gets bought out by a bigger company, and I get a new
email address as a result. I don't bother to update the friend with the
new address so I'm off the mailing list that way. Either that, or I say
bluntly that I don't want mail unless it is a personal note. Then I
never hear from them again.


Is there any way to predict who will write to me and who will put me on
a mailing list BEFORE I give out my address? Is there any effective way
to let someone know not to send junk? Can you squeeze personal message
water out of these otherwise friendly rocks? What does Miss Manners
have to say?


--Lia

I sure haven't seen Miss Manners address it, but I know we've all run into
this problem. I have a couple of in-laws, a distant cousin, and several
members of my guild who love to flood my mailbox with everything that comes
their way.

I set up a rule in my email program to filter all their messages into a
"junk I don't need to deal with" folder, and automatically mark it as read.
I figure by the time I've asked them repeatedly not to forward every joke
and "pass this on to 10 people immediately" message, and they've ignored my
request, I'm no longer obligated to even look at their messages. (This is
along the lines of the Miss Manners principle that you don't have to be nice
to rude people.) I have them (for a few months, anyway) if I need them, but
I'm not bothered with them.

True, I could miss something truly important. Not an issue with the in-laws,
as my BIL will email me separately if there's something I need to know.
Sometimes I do glance at the headers of the messages in that folder, and so
far the others have never sent anything that had much importance.

--
Kathy A. (Woodland, CA)
longarm machine quilting, Queen of Fabric Tramps
http://www.kayneyquilting.com ,
remove the obvious to reply



"Julia Altshuler" wrote in message
news:Qw%6c.47561$J05.369148@attbi_s01...
And this leads to an etiquette question I don't have a satisfactory
answer to.


I run into an old friend, someone I haven't seen in ages. Or maybe it
is a new friend. We exchange email addresses. I look forward to
coresponding a little news.


She sends a joke. Usually it is something old and tired. Only rarely
is it something I haven't seen before or think is funny. Either way,
there's never a personal note. I have joke books if I want jokes. I
send a note telling some friendly news I think might be of interest and
saying that I don't care for jokes much. The jokes continue. I ask
questions of a friendly nature, try to start a conversation. No
personal answers. I hint a little more and finally come out and say not
to send me jokes. That's when the inspirational messages, the political
petitions and urban legends begin.


Months can go by of being on this person's mailing list, and all I get
amounts to spam. Still, I'm reluctant to delete without reading when I
see the message line is from someone I know. I'm afraid of deleting it
the one time she sends something written especially for me.


Finally our old ISP gets bought out by a bigger company, and I get a new
email address as a result. I don't bother to update the friend with the
new address so I'm off the mailing list that way. Either that, or I say
bluntly that I don't want mail unless it is a personal note. Then I
never hear from them again.


Is there any way to predict who will write to me and who will put me on
a mailing list BEFORE I give out my address? Is there any effective way
to let someone know not to send junk? Can you squeeze personal message
water out of these otherwise friendly rocks? What does Miss Manners
have to say?


--Lia

Kathy Applebaum wrote:

I figure by the time I've asked them repeatedly not to forward every joke
and "pass this on to 10 people immediately" message, and they've ignored my
request, I'm no longer obligated to even look at their messages.


Actually, I have had good luck with answering everything they send with
a curt "please take me off your mailing list." I don't have the option
of the special filter (my mozilla problem again). I suppose the bigger
question is what motivates them. They must think they're being friendly
and can't imagine what's the matter with us.


--Lia

"Julia Altshuler" wrote in message
news:a907c.46818$JL2.607998@attbi_s03...
They must think they're being friendly
and can't imagine what's the matter with us.

You might have hit the nail on the head there.

--
Kathy A. (Woodland, CA)
longarm machine quilting, Queen of Fabric Tramps
http://www.kayneyquilting.com ,
remove the obvious to reply

Howdy!
My solution: after politely asking "them" to stop mass-emailing,
esp. including all addresses being made visible, I mass-email back;
cousin who has to pay for e-mail by the minute got at least 5 copies
of everything he sent to me--he finally got THE message and stopped. g
S-i-l who still masses mail without thinking gets at least 10 copies back of
each note, just to get her attention; she apologizes, stops for a while,
then forgets again (this has led to some annoying forwarded mails from some
of her goofy friends whose addresses get blocked thereafter); she won't
stop, and neither will I back-to-her. VBG
I also send out copies of quilt shop mail and quilts-to-see addys,
to "share" my interests. ;-D

Ragmop/Sandy--my favorite Miss Manners column addressed the
proper way to respond when a lady accidentally drops her pistol
in a social gathering...

"Kathy Applebaum" wrote in message
m...
I sure haven't seen Miss Manners address it, but I know we've all run into
this problem. I have a couple of in-laws, a distant cousin, and several
members of my guild who love to flood my mailbox with everything that
comes
their way.

I set up a rule in my email program to filter all their messages into a
"junk I don't need to deal with" folder, and automatically mark it as
read.
I figure by the time I've asked them repeatedly not to forward every joke
and "pass this on to 10 people immediately" message, and they've ignored
my
request, I'm no longer obligated to even look at their messages. (This is
along the lines of the Miss Manners principle that you don't have to be
nice
to rude people.) I have them (for a few months, anyway) if I need them,
but
I'm not bothered with them.

True, I could miss something truly important. Not an issue with the
in-laws,
as my BIL will email me separately if there's something I need to know.
Sometimes I do glance at the headers of the messages in that folder, and
so
far the others have never sent anything that had much importance.

--
Kathy A. (Woodland, CA)
longarm machine quilting, Queen of Fabric Tramps
http://www.kayneyquilting.com ,
remove the obvious to reply

" Ellison" wrote in message
m...

Ragmop/Sandy--my favorite Miss Manners column addressed the
proper way to respond when a lady accidentally drops her pistol
in a social gathering...

Oh, do tell! You never know when that will come in handy!

My favorite Miss Manners column introduced the term "ummer" for a
Person-of-the-opposite-sex-sharing-living-quarters. As in "This is my
daughter's umm, umm, errrrr...."

--
Kathy A. (Woodland, CA)
longarm machine quilting, Queen of Fabric Tramps
http://www.kayneyquilting.com ,
remove the obvious to reply

On 20 Mar 2004 04:36:44 GMT, melinda wrote:

It seems I'm being trageted by Spammers pushing Human Growth
Hormones. I WANT THIS TO STOP! How do I do something about it?

My spam got so bad I signed up for SpamArrest (www.spamarrest.com).
The cost is minimal and it has been highly successful in protecting me
from spammers. And, it has totally protected me from virus senders.

Another thing to do is to get something like AdAware
(http://www.lavasoft.nu). It is free. What this program does is to
find and quarantine (or remove) all "spyware" from your computer.
Some spyware sends your personal information to spammers so using this
software will also help.

Mardi
Real e-mail address spelled out to prevent spam. mardi at mardiweb dot com.
____________________

My Quilting page: http://www.mardiweb.com/quilts/MardiQuilts.html
Paint Shop Pro tutorials: http://www.mardiweb.com/web
Low-Fat Lifestyle Forum: http://www.mardiweb.com/lowfat

nzl* wrote:
first check your isp to see if they have free spam delete thingy working.
i had to ask for it to be set on my email acct.

ISP uses spam assasin(IIRC), which is set on our accounts with a low
tolerance but these are getting through because they seem to addressed
to me.

when i started going from a few spams a day to over 300 a day all in the
space of a couple of days, after a week i was going bonkers and not very
quietly either i might add.
i changed my email addy (my isp lets us use up to five email addys, luckily
i had stuck with the one for 4.5yrs) and am now extra careful where i use
it.
i also use mailwasher.
www.mailwasher.net
with mailwasher i can preview and either bounce or delete after i see who
they're from. i was bouncing a lot and then realized it was pointless as so
many spammers use bogus return addys and the bounce comes back to me as
undeliverable. arghhhh. now i just delete, delete, delete. so few now.

I don't want to have to change my email address, our account allows for
several addresses as well, but about half are used already (DH has
addresses for business and private). I don't even get to see these
emails because DH sends my email through to my computer, so he deletes
the junk and spam, but 4 of these things came through yesterday all from
different addresses and I think I've been careful with my email address.

have you recently subscribed to something online that is outside the norm?
some places sell their addy list. anything i'm unsure of i use the yahoo
addy. then if it is spam i just hit the yahoo spam button and let them deal
with it.
so far so good.
sorry, not much help but the best i could think of.
i hope someone here has some better info for you.
hugz from across the ditch,
jeanne

Not subscribed or unsubscribed, but have done a few unusual google searches...

--
Melinda
http://cust.idl.com.au/athol

Sharon Harper wrote:
Are you using Optus Mel? If so, I know they have a spam thingy that you can
set because DH did mine. We also use Outlook Express and the spam doesn't
even come through to OE - Although I can check it using Webmail in case some
regular emails accidently get caught. Also I set up message rules to look
for any funny words which works a treat. I send those straight to my
deleted box so that I can still check them if I want to. I've gone from
about 100 a day to 2.

Not Optus, a local ISP who is very good. They use spam assasin (IIRC).

--
Melinda
http://cust.idl.com.au/athol

if i think of anything else that might be useful, i'll let ya know.
gawd, i nearly went mad the week i got it.
oh wait, i was mad already, ok, just got worse, swore a whole lot more.
jeanne
--
http://community.webshots.com/user/nzlstar
real reply is san-fran at ihug dot co dot nz

"melinda" wrote...
nzl* wrote:
first check your isp to see if they have free spam delete thingy working.
i had to ask for it to be set on my email acct.

ISP uses spam assasin(IIRC), which is set on our accounts with a low
tolerance but these are getting through because they seem to addressed
to me.

when i started going from a few spams a day to over 300 a day all in the
space of a couple of days, after a week i was going bonkers and not very
quietly either i might add.
i changed my email addy (my isp lets us use up to five email addys,
luckily
i had stuck with the one for 4.5yrs) and am now extra careful where i use
it.
i also use mailwasher.
www.mailwasher.net
with mailwasher i can preview and either bounce or delete after i see who
they're from. i was bouncing a lot and then realized it was pointless as
so
many spammers use bogus return addys and the bounce comes back to me as
undeliverable. arghhhh. now i just delete, delete, delete. so few now.

I don't want to have to change my email address, our account allows for
several addresses as well, but about half are used already (DH has
addresses for business and private). I don't even get to see these
emails because DH sends my email through to my computer, so he deletes
the junk and spam, but 4 of these things came through yesterday all from
different addresses and I think I've been careful with my email address.

have you recently subscribed to something online that is outside the norm?
some places sell their addy list. anything i'm unsure of i use the yahoo
addy. then if it is spam i just hit the yahoo spam button and let them
deal
with it.
so far so good.
sorry, not much help but the best i could think of.
i hope someone here has some better info for you.
hugz from across the ditch,
jeanne

Not subscribed or unsubscribed, but have done a few unusual google
searches...
--
Melinda
http://cust.idl.com.au/athol