Miscellaneous

Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing

By on • ( 47 Comments )

Imagine you’re buried beneath an avalanche of pork and ham, mixed together in a gelatinous conglomeration of pink, stinky goo. You know, spam. But maybe you don’t have to imagine. Maybe it’s already happened to you.

Spam buries email users every day.

This may not be your problem if you live in Canada or Europe. Those havens have strong anti-spam laws that require your consent before you can be buried in that meaty mess.

But in the U.S.A. it’s a little different. We’re constantly wiping this goopy filth off of us, every time we check our email. America is a spammer’s heaven, and an email user’s hell. It’s the age of Spamalot on this side of the pond.

But the good new is, we have rights. And these rights can help us greatly reduce our spam intake. In 2003, the CAN-SPAM act was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Bush. CAN-SPAM stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing.

Many critics call it the YOU-CAN-SPAM Act, because it doesn’t stop those sick bastard spammers from spamming us. It only gives us rights to limit the spamming. You see, in Canada and Europe you have to opt-in to receive spam. But in America, you must opt-out.

Check out the bottom of any advertising email you receive. The CAN-SPAM Act requires every such email to have an “unsubscribe” link, or equivalent. Click on that link, and it should take you to a website that allows you to unsubscribe from receiving any more email from that particular spammer. Just follow the instructions for unsubscribing.

But be careful. Sometimes the instructions get tricky, and could even deceive you into subscribing for more spam. So read the instructions with a cynical eye for detail.

After you unsubscribe, the spammers have 10 days to take you off their mailing list. And they can’t sell your email address anymore, to other spammers.

I filter my spam, but sometimes a legitimate email gets caught in that filter. Trying to locate it can be like looking for a needle in a stack of sticky, gooey meat-mix. So I decided enough was enough, and I rolled up my sleeves and got tough on spam.

I spent about a half-hour groping through all the spam I had received over the course of one day. The pink, slimy substance was getting all over my fingers, arms, and pants. But I persevered, and unsubscribed from just about every damned gobbet of mystery meat in my bulging spam box.

The next day, much to my surprise, a lot of spam had disappeared. Rather than 40 or 50 spams, I only had about 10 or 15. It appears most spammers are good at taking you off their lists immediately. But some seem to take full advantage of the 10-day grace period.

Now the spam has slowed to a tiny trickle of dripping ooze. The CAN-SPAM Act does seem to work, but only if we, the spammed, do our work and take the time to unsubscribe.

So if you want to dig out from under a giant, suffocating pile of spam, look for the link to unsubscribe, near the bottom of your emails, and go on an anti-spamming tear.

But when you’re finished, be sure to take a shower. That shit is nasty stuff.

Here’s a typical unsubscribe link at the bottom of a spam message from Consumer Reports. Yes even Consumer Reports, an organization dedicated to protecting consumers, spams consumers!

Categories: Miscellaneous

47 replies »

  1. Just to expand on this a little further (a Canadian experience) – sometimes clicking “unsubscribe” does nothing except confirm that their mailing program has reached a “live” device. Also, while it is illegal for Canadian companies to promote unsolicited goods and services, there is nothing that can be done when the origin is “off shore”.
    My rules of engagement – let the spam filter that comes with WordPress do its job. As for unsolicited emails? Read them carefully and apply the basic rule of purchasing – “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is!” – DO NOT CLICK on any links within the email. Finally, the general rule that “you get what you pay for” is a good guide when it comes to security software. $30 -$40/year is a small price to pay for a program which is constantly monitoring your desktop/laptop for risky programs … and risky moves on your part! 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    • Those are all wise and prudent rules, similar to the Laws of Holes. I felt a little nervous about clicking the “unsubscribe” links, but so far nothing terrible has happened, and I’ve gotten rid of almost all my spam.

      If clicking on a link was going to install a virus on my computer, Windows would prompt me first to authorize changes to my system. Which of course I’d answer “no” to. But nothing like that happened with any of the links.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  2. It’s the spam phone calls that drive me even more crazy! The ones selling something, or doing surveys, which they say will only take 5 minutes, or telling you your computer is about to crash, but they can fix it for you, funny how my computer keeps working in spite of me hanging up on them. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • Same here. The robocalls and phone solicitors drive us nuts. We signed up with nomorobo, and that has cut down quite a bit of it, but some manage to get through anyway. The phone industry has gone insane lately with all the telemarketing.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

        • We have cable phone service from Spectrum. Spectrum offers Nomorobo for no extra charge. We just had to get onto our online account and sign up for it. Now, when a robocall comes in, the number shows briefly on our TV screen, so we know we’re being robocalled. It happens a lot, so apparently Nomorobo is thwarting a lot of the incoming solicitors.

          Liked by 1 person

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  3. I don’t have much of an issue with SPAM on either of my e-mail accounts. A few pieces a day land in my SPAM folder and I empty it.

    Every once in a while, I get something “suspect” in my regular in-box. If I can’t tell for sure that it’s crap, I open the message to check its contents. If it’s crap, I press SPAM (to send it to the SPAM folder). If it refuses to leave (e.g., a pop up window appears that says, “Press this link to unsubscribe”), I never press the link. Instead, I close the message and then send the closed message to the SPAM folder to trash it.

    Why? Because I don’t like to press links in unsolicited e-mail . . . especially when said link arrives via a pop-up window.

    Glad you’ve had some success in limiting the SPAM reaching you. Glad your computer didn’t implode.

    Liked by 1 person

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