My email address has remained virtually spam-free for several years, which I think is fairly impressive. Recently, however, I have started receiving unsolicited junk mail from a variety of sources, yet as far as I know my email address is not out in the public domain. At least, I didn’t put it there.
The advantage of having your own domain name based email address has the potential to be its downfall. I want to maintain the same address for my life on the Net, so spam is a real killer. I don’t want to trash my address like some cheap hotmail setup. This is for the long-term. That’s why I am extremely careful who gets access to my email address, and for what purposes. I have an iname, I don’t publish my address on my web site, or online. I try to ensure anything I sign up for is from reputable sources.
The weakest link? Contacts, as I have always maintained. Bad email distribution practices make the control of spam very difficult. This is true with circular emails, be they for virus warnings, jokes, social issues, or such. I am happy to receive all of these (with the exception of virus warnings which are almost always hoaxes) but what I hate is people who paste all the addresses in the “To” or “Cc” fields, and send the message.
The whole point of many of these viral emails is that they get forwarded to other people. People are almost as bad at editing forwarded email as they are at sending private email. It’s my online pet hate, but it’s so difficult to do anything about. I have no control over who sends me mail, or who includes my address in their mass visible email which is then forwarded on multiple times – with my addresss present in every replication.
Even on the original distribution list of the email I’ve just received, there are people I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want other people to have my address? Once I received an email from someone who had sent it to their entire address book including a public mailing list! Gah! Goodness only knows where my email address ended up.
My spam filters are good, but they shouldn’t have to stand in for people’s poor email management. Yet, at the same time, I am scared to try to educate people, because it is seen as an offensive thing to do. People often get very up-tight if I point out good email etiquette, possibly because it is seen as pointing out a weakness. It isn’t, honestly, it’s just friendly advice. Most people wouldn’t send out a circular by regular mail and list everyone’s addresses, unless they were totally confident that everyone knew each other and were happy to have details publicised. Why should email be any different. Email addresses should be guarded. I do my part, I feel powerless against other people’s use of my property.
Sorry to go on. Pet hates usually do…
The solutions? For starters:
- Send individual emails, or put the recipients in the “Bcc” field (ironically this scuppers some basic spam filters).
- Don’t post bulk email around to people for whom you are the only common link.
- Don’t forward email without editing out email addresses listed in the text (it’s good to tidy up an email before sending it, anyway).
Not difficult.
Update: Argh! I’ve just taken another look at that email and one of the addresses is wrong – in other words, it’s not one of the sender’s contacts. Unfortunately, though, the email address is valid – so, yep, a complete stranger now has all our email addresses! Bwah!
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