Following Mistermix’s bitch the other day, you know what really pisses me off?
My primary gmail account is no longer usable because all of the assholes I have done nice things for and donated now fucking spam me every day. Every fucking stupid thing every Democratic candidate wants to say is now directly puked into my inbox. It just infuriates me, and the assholes who do this make me want to never donate to anyone ever again. Do all these asshole publicists for the Politico and everywhere else, who I never asked for emails, think they are helping their cause and making me like them more?
On top of that, the DCCC, DNC, DSCC, and all of the people I have set up monthly donations to are simply not content with what I already give, but they are calling me asking me for special matching offers. I’m on the federal do not call list so I do not have to deal with this shit, for both my house and my cell, but because I volunteere and supported their cause, they now think my phone numbers are fair game.
Fuck them all.
Michael G
A few months ago, I went through and clicked on a bajillion “Unsubscribe” links.
Surprisingly it mostly worked.
Highly recommended.
Eric U.
click on “more” “filter” “send direct to folder” select “trash” done and done
TooManyJens
ActBlue is the absolute worst for this. Never donate through them with an email address you wouldn’t want every Dem candidate in the country to end up with.
Mike Jones
Oh yeah. So. Freaking. Annoying.
Eric U.
if all that happened was emails, I would be ecstatic. We gave to the DNC a couple of times, now we get phone calls from the DSCC, the DCCC, the Democratic governors, and goodness knows who else. I might give to the DNC again, but only in anonymous bitcoin transactions
mzrad
Make a rule in your email to channel emails from whatever email address into a “Political” file or play the unsubscribe game. And breathe. [whooosh]
Mnemosyne
One of the animal rescue groups I donated to because of a post here now sends me photos of dogs in need of medical care. One of them had a tumor the size of a football growing on its face. That’s always a fun one to see in email.
CaseyL
Save the current primary gmail account as a repository for all the spam, and open a new email account (gmail or elsewhere) that is only for friends and family.
It won’t last forever, but it will last a pretty good long time; and meanwhile, all the spam will keep going to the other gmail account.
Can’t help much with the phone stuff. Your phone company might offer a non-solicitation greeting option that tells solicitors to drop dead, and everyone else to press “1.” It’s most useful against automated calls.
TheMightyTrowel
That’s why some of us have 5 email addresses. One is solely for purchasing and donating.
Southern Beale
Oh lordie it’s not just the fucking Spam begs, it’s the goddamn PHONE CALLS at the DINNER HOUR from Democrats, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the local arts groups, my goddamn alumni association, the you fucking name it and you can’t get off these lists, EVER.
I fucking hate it and it’s the number one thing which has made me such a cynical fucking human being because I realized every political organization, right left and center, is basically a fucking MONEY GENERATING MACHINE that’s it, that’s their reason to exist.
I’m so OVER this shit.
Okay and since I’m ranting, you know what else I’m sick of? Every fucking company and organization asking me to take their goddamn survey. I WILL NOT TAKE YOUR SURVEY. LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE.
Jesus but if anything is going to make me go full-unibomber and go off into the woods and grumble hysterics into my mug of stale coffee it’s this.
cmorenc
Exactly. I get at least twenty to twenty-five a day, and it’s impossible to create any lastingly effective filters for them, because they have more different email accounts among them than grains of sand on a beach and more different domains than stalks of corn in Iowa in July.
SiubhanDuinne
Don’t ever order anything from any catalogue from anyone, ever, or you will never, ever see the bottom of your mailbox again, ever.
I’m also on the verge of setting up a new gmail account just so all the political and charitable beggings go to the old overloaded account and I can keep the new one for friends, family, and bills I actually want to pay.
NotMax
Having a separate e-mail address for business use (donating money is a business transaction) is a good idea.
As is having a separate credit card for use exclusively for online buying.
Southern Beale
Also, I bought a new computer because my ancient laptop went kerblooey last week and the new ones have fucking autocorrect which I haven’t figured out how to dismantle because it’s making me look like an ignoramus.
Life sucks, offa my lawn, etc
NotMax
In moderation for no discernible reason.
FYWP, BTW.
Waspuppet
My wife is not a citizen, so while she’s very liberal she has never signed a petition or given a dime to a campaign. But she gets bombarded with solicitations. I don’t know how they found her.
TheMightyTrowel
@SiubhanDuinne: Do it. I have a yahoo account for purchasing/donating, a gmail account for blog commenting/online shit that i’m pseudonymous for, a gmail account for personal use with my name attached, a work email address from my university and a work email address from my previous employer for continued contacts with students/research contacts. Also i get emails filtered to my personal gmail from an alumni email address from my university. It’s kind of a pain, but actually it makes life much easier.
Southern Beale
@SiubhanDuinne:
Oh, honey, I set up a junk email account years ago. That’s a necessity.
SiubhanDuinne
Not that anyone here will know first-hand, but are the Republicans as annoying as the Dems on the spam mail front? Are there Rick/Scott/Walker folks out there bitterly complaining about all the damned begging emails they get from the RNC?
MattR
@CaseyL: I think this is the best option available. It is much easier to get important people to use a new address (which you will never use for any donations, online purchases, etc) than to get all the spammers to stop using the old one. The goal is to eventually reach a point where the old account is almost entirely spam and you can scan through it quickly once a week or so to make sure there is nothing important (and if so forward it to your new account) and then wipe the inbox clean.
@Mnemosyne: Luckily my email program is currently setup to automatically filter pictures out of emails and I now know not to click to open any images from that rescue group.
Cassidy
In the amount of time it took to write that, you could mark as junk.
Southern Beale
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yes they are. And I only know this because I’ve somehow gotten on these list (and get PHONE CALLS from them too!!) and I’ve never, ever signed up for anything Republican-flavored, ever. I somehow got stuff from Brian Fischer’s group, and I had the College Republicans calling me too. So they’ve got some long, long tentacles. I probably ordered from a catalogue once and mailing lists were sold and somehow I got added to the GOP’s bleg list.
Hilarious, once this lady who sounded like she was 150 years old called me from the College Republicans and I just laughed, I asked her what decade she graduated from college.
J.Ty
You can sign up for things as [email protected] and then they’ll still come into your account, but you can set up a filter to divert all the list messages.
Southern Beale
Also, I get calls from scammers all the time, people offering me bogus healthcare, bogus “medical alert” systems, bogus credit card re-fi’s, etc. The sheer volume of this crap I get is overwhelming. And I’ve been on the “Do Not Call” list since it was invented.
Southern Beale
Also, I get calls from scammers all the time, people offering me bogus healthcare, bogus “medical alert” systems, bogus credit card re-fi’s, etc. The sheer volume of this crap I get is overwhelming. And I’ve been on the “Do Not Call” list since it was invented.
ruemara
Agreed. But I just delete them anyhow.
Bill E Pilgrim
Yeah, I hate that.
Mind you, I don’t know if you’ve ever really considered the benefits of supporting the Bill E Pilgrim fund for whatever cause I can dream up. Your generous donation will help one select commenter take some well-deserved time off. Just think of the warm feeling you’ll get knowing that I didn’t have to work for year.
The best part is that as a supporter you’ll receive regular updates throughout the year, via email.
MattR
@Southern Beale: But are the Republicans on those lists annoyed by all the emails and calls? Or are they excited to be kept up to speed on the latest way the Obama is destroying America and the GOP plans to stop him?
cmorenc
We still have a land-line, which I never answer unless and until I screen it using the answering machine function. I never give out my cell phone to any commercial or political organization. However, despite being on the federal “do not call” lists for both home and cell phone lines, this will be roundly ignored by any business that has even the thinnest sort of plausible established “business relationship” with you, and also political organizations and nonprofit charities are exempt.
Unfortunately, the “Rachael credit-card services” scamsters have somehow discovered my cell phone line, but fortunately they’ve only tried twice at widely separated times to call me on that. On our land line, it was like every other day for awhile (but since I never picked up, it was less annoying than it would have been if I was still picking up without letting the answering machine screen the calls).
Laertes
I have a simple rule: If I don’t recognize the number, I don’t answer the goddamn phone. There are people I know, and people who are willing to leave a voicemail, and people I don’t need to hear from. There is no fourth type.
I’ve done this for years, and never missed an important call.
SiubhanDuinne
@TheMightyTrowel:
@Southern Beale:
Yeah, I’m a bit late to this game. One of my biggest fears is that a legitimate bill will get lost among all the solicitations and I’ll get disconnected or incur late fees or something. I’m making that a priority for the holidays — clearing out all the chaff and setting up various new accounts.
KG
I have two “spare” email accounts just for this. I have my main email that I use for stuff I want. I have two others that I use when I sign up for stuff where I know I’m going to get a bunch of crap. I rarely check the two spare accounts any more
HinTN
Yep, modern life sux sometimes.
NotMax
Guess I’m alone in checking my e-mail accounts only maybe 4 or 5 times a year (if I even think to) unless engaged in a finite colloquy with someone which we have both already agreed to.
SiubhanDuinne
@Southern Beale:
Class of Ought-Five. Nineteen Ought-Five.
Southern Beale
ALSO, a correction:
No actually political groups and charitable groups are exempt from the do-not-call list. It’s that fucking Constitution.
Southern Beale
@SiubhanDuinne:
She totally sounded like she was 80 gazillion years old. I just laughed at her.
Felonius Monk
@TheMightyTrowel:
You are a lot more efficient than I am, if you can get away with only five. :)
TheMightyTrowel
@SiubhanDuinne: If you’re in a place where it’s financially possible, direct debit is your friend. I actually have done a similar thing with bill paying: I have a bills only bank account to which every biller is connected via DD, i calculate my expenses per week and have a dd from my checking account into the bills account. Every 6 mo or so i reevaluate amounts. I have a steady income and for me this works, it means what’s in my chk account is actually what I have to spend on food and flights and my bills always get paid on time.
MattR
@Southern Beale: I used to get the “consolidate debt” calls much more often. I think the decrease in frequency coincides with when I started waiting for an operator to pick up after the automated bit, let them go through their whole spiel (while I was doing something else like reading BJ), then when they start asking me for personal info, I ask them what bank or financial institution they are associated with. Maybe the change in frequency is coincidental, but I like to think it is because they realized I am just wasting their time.
Southern Beale
@Laertes:
I did that for a while but actually did miss a few important calls because these days everyone fucking assumes you have Caller ID and no one leaves a message anymore.
Personally I’d like to ditch the landline but husband won’t let me. I did finally get us unlisted.
Bubba Dave
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m the IT manager at a company full of folks who count as wacko conservative by Texas standards, which means I’m the guy who sorts through the spam quarantine trawling for babies in the bathwater, so I can tell you: Rs are a thousand times worse.
Like our estimable bloghost, as a Democratic donor I get solicitations from every Dem running for office in Texas, Ohio, PA, Florida, Virginia and Missouri. (Can you guess which senate campaigns I donated to?) But the Republicans in my office get all that, PLUS (let’s see if I can avoid the FYWP moderation):
Information on stocks whose value, currently under a buck, is destined for a meteoric rise
Links to videos which have been made unavailable with extreme prejudice by the mainstream media (which apparently includes Google)
Suggestions of peculiar nourishment which can reduce tumors, improve cardiac health, and/or regain svelteness
Plus countless books flogging the conspiracy theory du jour.
Basically, think about the sort of people who consider Cornyn a RINO and Sara Palin a visionary. That mailing list is pure GOLD if you’re looking for suckers. And the marketeers know it.
(Those ads? Sent by valued Red State and Freedom Outpost advertisers, with little blurbs from the sites. If ActBlue ever did that to me I’d hunt them down and set fire to their Priuses– with their lattes inside. But the conservatives eat that stuff up.
Southern Beale
For example, tonight while we’re eating my delicious dinner I slaved all afternoon over the damn Nielsen ratings people called. Seriously, they call about every week. Just, DIAF.
PaulW
My parents and I normally do not agree on a few political issues, but we do agree that we HATE THE GODDAMN CAMPAIGNING SPAM THAT KILLS OUR INBOX EVERY HOUR.
Look, Obama, I love you like a brother and I want you to succeed, BUT STOP ASKING ME FOR ANOTHER $50 CONTRIBUTION. I’m a librarian. I AM NOT MADE OF MONEY. NINETY PERCENT OF AMERICA IS NOT MADE OF MONEY.
You know what these contributions are for? Keeping the campaign organizations flowing. Even though the elections are done, and the midterms are coming up. There ought to be a law that says you can’t raise funds outside of the calendar year of the election you’re campaigning for. That ought to force these full-time campaigners to go find real jobs in the real world.
You want more money out of me, Obama? GET A DAMN FAIR WAGES BILL PASSED SO THAT EVERY EMPLOYED PERSON IS ABOVE THE POVERTY LINE. /headdesk
Chris
@Southern Beale:
Knowing exactly what a gargantuan 1%er-funded money machine our people are up against, I find it hard to be completely mad at them.
(My alma mater, though, is another matter. No, I can’t afford to donate right now. And since you got $40,000+ per year for four years from me, I’d say I’ve done my part to keep you afloat).
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@J.Ty:
Strongly recommended; this was my process for quite a few years, and it’s cheap, simple, and works. Most notably, it allows you to trace who’s sending which emails to whom. The downside is that the plus symbol is rejected by many forms verifying email addresses, even though every SMTP server is designed to send it.
There are other services that provide ‘middleman” email addresses that do similar things, and don’t use the plus symbol. These can also really help corral your spam, as well.
beltane
@Southern Beale: I get those too. For a while I kept getting calls from a live person informing me that my free Medicare scooter was ready for delivery. At 45, I am the oldest person in this household.
Violet
@Southern Beale: Don’t you have to sign up on the Do Not Call lists every so often? Five years or so? And isn’t there a state list and a national list? That’s how it was when it first started. Not sure now.
Southern Beale
@MattR:
It’s coincidental. You’ll be back on their radar, trust me.
gene108
I gave to the DCCC. I kept getting calls, but I realized they came up as “unknown name, unknown number” on my caller ID, so I’d ignore them.
It got so annoying, I picked up the phone and told them to stop calling me and put me on a do not call list. The DCCC did this.
I then get a call the next day from the DSCC….urgh….told the DSCC to not bother me anymore
So far so good on the calls, though I get donation requests in the mail, which I do not want to write a check to because I think the calls will start up again.
I wonder how many donors they’ve pissed off by over saturating them?
different-church-lady
And that’s why I have a “throwaway” Yahoo account I use for anything that isn’t work or friends.
Yes, I know that wasn’t your point.
Southern Beale
@Violet:
Yes you do have to re-sign up, and I’ve done so. But the scam artists don’t care if you’re on the list or not. And hubs insisted we have a listed phone number until I finally told him I couldn’t take all the scammers.
I work from home, he’s out at the office all day.
Southern Beale
Nothing makes one realize that political parties are solely money making ventures like getting snail mail begs, email begs, and phone call begs from the DSCC, DNC and DCCC all in the same fucking day.
NotMax
@Violet
Originally, yes, but that was later altered to make it one time lasting forever (or until legislated differently).
different-church-lady
@Southern Beale: If they’re offering bogus stuff, why on earth would you think they’d obey the Do Not Call list?
Comrade Jake
DCCC caller, halfway through his five-minute intro, and I stop him:
Me: “I’m sorry but I have to interrupt you. We just gave $100 to the DSCC this week so we’re kind of tapped out. You guys need to do a little bit better job synching your databases. We appreciate what you all are doing, so I’m going to let you get on to the next person.”
DCCC guy: “So do you want to give $100 to the DCCC?”
Me: hangs up.
beltane
What I dislike more than anything are the animal cruelty posts on Facebook. I know these people mean well but I really do not want to see pictures of dogs being boiled in the Philippines, etc. I can’t do anything to stop these things and I am traumatized by seeing it.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
Enforcement ends at the border, one reason behind all those “We have detected a virus on your computer” scam calls from India.
Violet
@Southern Beale: @NotMax: Just checked the donotcall.gov website and found this:
So potentially just changing plans could get you taken off the list.
Violet
Got sent to moderation for too many links. Editing out a link:
@Southern Beale: @NotMax: Just checked the donotcall.gov website and found this:
So potentially just changing plans could get you taken off the list.
MattR
@Southern Beale: At least with the email blegs, you hope that means that the vast majority of your money is going to fund the actual organization and not to pay for the cost of fundraising.
Violet
@NotMax: The last one of those I got was at 7:45 a.m., and the caller ID said “United Nations.” I answered it out of curiosity to see who the “United Nations” was. It was some poor woman doing the virus scam. I screamed at her and told her I was calling the police. She hung up on me.
I’ve had a good time claiming to be so relieved they’ve called me because definitely something is wrong with my computer! And then acting incredibly dumb about the computer– “The cup holder isn’t working!” and keeping them waiting for fifteen minutes while I try to find the power button or figure out how to open a web page. I put them on speaker and do other work and occasionally they ask me if I’ve connected to their website and I tell them “Yes!” and then obviously no, I haven’t so they go around again. Eventually they hand up. For some reason that entertains me greatly. I only do it if I have the time and can accomplish other tasks while I’m making them wait.
SiubhanDuinne
@TheMightyTrowel: I have just recently retired and my pension is just now kicking in but I’m not yet totally accustomed to the new (lower) standard of living. I’m going to give things a few months to settle down, reevaluate my expenses, and then go to direct payment for regular things like utilities. My rent payment varies somewhat from one month to the next because of fluctuating water/sewer, but phone, electric, etc. can all be taken out automatically.
Xecky Gilchrist
Lots of good tech tips in this thread, but it’s still the case that these donation services – I’m looking at you, especially, ActBlue – need to have a “YES PLZ SPAM ME LOL” checkbox you can uncheck (and have it fucking mean something) at donation time.
eastriver
So, I take it you haven’t given up drinking yet?
Southern Beale
@Violet:
The do not call list is worthless. International scammers operating outside the law have figured out how to scam phone numbers and use those. I got one that Caller ID said was “Michael Kors” (local deluxe shop, not the designer), and it was a fucking credit card scam.
FCC can’t keep on top of them.
Seanly
Politic advocacy calls are not subject to the Do Not Call lists. Do you think they would set something like that up & the pols wouldn’t leave themselves exempt?
Southern Beale
Here’s a story from last year:
schrodinger's cat
Cranky thread needs sweet kitteh
matt
@J.Ty:
Also if you’re not concerned with tracing the first seller of your email address, you could add spurious periods to it, because gmail ignores those too.
BGinCHI
Great rant.
Non-profits can call you even if you are on the do-not-call list.
Does anyone know to the contrary? The fuckers call me all the time. They are making me donate less.
TheMightyTrowel
@SiubhanDuinne: When I was a student it was hellish trying to balance bills and food with irregular paychecks and loan/grant income. I basically broke even most months only because I was living with my partner who owned our flat and charged me a nominal rent rather than half the mortgage. He’s getting his own though: He’s spent the last 2 years as a kept man and shows no sign of going back to work anytime soon, so even with the steady income i’m pretty close to break even again.
p.a.
I’m batting about .300 on the ‘unsubscribe’ front. SierraClub you suck!: Unsubscribe means unsubscribe, dammit.
Southern Beale
@Michael G:
That’s great but as soon as you have any other dealings with that company again — buy something, make a donation, whatever — you’re back on the fucking email list again. There needs to be a “permanent unsubscribe” option and there never, ever is.
SiubhanDuinne
@Bubba Dave:
So, basically the NewsMax headlines then?
Don K
This is why (way back in the dark ages 80s) I gave up on the Sierra Club. I would send them a substantial donation at the end of every year, and they would call me at least once a month and send mailings twice a month asking for more. They were insatiable, so I cut them off.
Suzanne
While the fuckton-of-email thing is certainly an annoyance, I hate having different logins and passwords. I have OnePassword on my phone to help me with this.
HERE is what is just driving me CRAZY: my mom has a name that is more commonly spelled with a C, but she spells it with a K. Not a weird name by any means. I like to use Siri to make phone calls while I’m driving so I don’t have to look at the screen. It used to be that if I told Siri, “Call (MOM FIRST NAME)”, the call would start just like normal. However, two weeks ago, Siri apparently forgot my mom’s name. Now, fuckin’ Siri tells me that it can’t find her in my contacts. IT WORKED TWO WEEKS AGO.
normal liberal
I would kill to just get the emails. Instead, the DNC and all it’s D cousins make endless phone calls with earnest young folk demanding that I continue to show my love for the party with yet another 50, 300, 1,000 or more.
I once had someone call from the DNC and, after praising my generosity during the campaign, casually asked if I could pony up thirty-one freaking thousand dollars. I burst out laughing, and when I could breathe again, barked NO. I then suggested that they had me on the wrong list by one or two orders of magnitude. At least.
Then there are the large envelopes from the “presidential leadership partnership,” or some such twaddle, with glossy photos and lots of friendly suggestions that I turn over my non-existent firstborn.
There are days when I wonder how these operations pulled off one win, let alone two.
sherparick
Ditto to all of the above. I now have the same line I use on every phone call. “I am sorry, but I do not respond to telephone solicitations. Please do not call again. Have a nice day. Goodby”
Mike in NC
I get 10-20 emails per day asking me to kick in $3 to fight the billionaire Koch brothers. Right.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Bluntly put, phoning while driving bad.
Pull over.
Mandalay
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Even companies that claim to “care about your privacy”, and provide that checkbox, often still force you to opt out to avoid receiving their spam.
If they truly cared then you wouldn’t even need to opt out to avoid the spam.
NotMax
@sherparick
Bravo.
The companies also bank on the fact that the vast, vast majority of people will never bother to file a complaint with enforcement agencies.
Joel
I donated to Stamp Out Hunger via the USPS a few years ago and was rewarded with a deluge of solicitations from unrelated charities, including one where they included a dollar bill so that the recipient would be guilted into donating. If anything is going to make a man a Scrooge, that will do it.
MikeJ
@BGinCHI:
Anyone you have ever done business with can call you regardless of the Do Not Call list. If they have a prior relationship with you all bets are off.
Another Holocene Human
@TooManyJens: ActBlue doesn’t call me, though. They can spam my email all they want.
What I really want to know is HTH Matt Kibbe (FreedomWorks) ever got my email address. Freaky!
Southern Beale
I just spent a few minutes unsubscribing from some links on my junk email account. Amazing how many of those folks I’d never “subscribed” to in the first place.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Mandalay: Hence the parenthetical.
Bill Arnold
@SiubhanDuinne:
Or worse. It’s almost worth subscribing to one or two RW newsletters just to see what products are being pitched to known-gullible audiences. Almost. (Also, you get many of the right wing talking points trial balloons early, and they can be amusing.)
normal liberal
@sherparick:
I use that too. No one seems to take it seriously. I once suggested email or snail mail to a caller, and he started arguing with me about their comparative efficiencies. I hung up.
Mandalay
@MikeJ:
Not really….
So they can legitimately call you once, but if you tell them not to call you again then they must stop.
magurakurin
okay, here’s my complaint…or it may be that I’m just doing something wrong, but…with the comment thread here it used to be that you could click on the poster’s name link after the @mark and then it would pop you to the comment that was being commented on. Then, you hit the back button and popped back to where you were down thread. This doesn’t seem to work anymore. Now, you jump back to the original comment, but hitting the back button takes you to the start of the thread. Not sure when this change happened, but I noticed it a while back. Did something change or am I doing something wrong? The old way was pretty nice.
Bill Arnold
My wife gets these, though they mostly go to her spam folder now. (She has a email program with independently trained filter.)
Wondering if they would be receptive to a threat to donate some money to Republicans for every unsolicited email.
TriassicSands
Cole, try unsubscribing.
In a relatively short time the citizen petition instrument has been adopted and ruined by political candidates. This bothers me more than the constant groveling for money, because it is just thinly disguised groveling for money.
Every politician seems to have discovered they need to tell me about their latest crusade, a crusade for which he or she has created a vital petition. We need to “Tell John Boehner to quit being a dick.” Who doesn’t want to tell Boehner to stop being such a colossal dick? But the nanosecond you click “Sign” you will be hustled along to the real point of this communication — groveling for money.
Among groups, in my experience the DCCC is the worst offender of the daily request for money. They don’t bother with hiding their emails behind a petition — they’re up front about wanting every penny I have.
I’ve begun weeding out the most egregious perps and in time I may eliminate all but the few Democratic (and Socialist) politicians who I actually believe are doing consistently good work.
What annoys/angers me most about this trend is that some very good things have been at least helped along by citizen petitions. Now, the greedy politicians, who think they need a constant infusion of cash, are threatening to ruin this the way big corporations and special interests have taken over and ruined citizen initiatives.
Note: I say “think they need,” because in the case of representatives most are in gerrymandered districts where most incumbents can’t lose and most challengers have scant hope of winning.
Violet
@normal liberal: I do the same thing. “I don’t give money over the phone. Goodbye.” Hang up. My blood pressure doesn’t go up and my time isn’t wasted.
Bill Arnold
@Southern Beale:
Report them. To the government’s reporting site, not the sites that show up higher in a google search. (Don’t know that they’re fake but assume so.)
James Hare
It won’t help with your current spam but for all future signups where you use an email you should enter your email like this:
normal email username[email protected] — it will still get to your inbox but you can filter by the “TO” address to get those messages easily. If you’d like to know who is sending you spam do something like +DNCCSPAM and filter according to that. I use that method to setup almost every online account that asks for an email.
namekarB
Got rid of the land line a few months ago. Don’t miss it at all. I don’t answer the cell phone if I do not know who is calling. And I have a spam blocker app. If I get tired of too many emails from either a store or a political org (or a certain cousin), all their email gets redirected to the spam folder. I don’t answer the door unless I am expecting you.
Now if I could get the USPS to leave a paper recycle box by the mailbox I would be real happy and the post office could make a ton of money recycling 3rd class mail.
NotMax
@Bill Arnold
No idea if it is still being marketed, but there was an alarm clock at one time which could be programmed to donate a small amount to a cause or group you disagreed with if the snooze button was hit more than one time.
Gravenstone
I must be a telemarketer’s dream, in terms of call cycle time.
/phone rings
Hello? Sorry, I’m not interested, please remove me from your list. Thank you, goodbye.
/click
Comrade Dread
Ran into this problem a while ago. My primary hotmail account that I signed up for back when I could still use my proper name as an account name, turned into spam central.
I gave it up. Now I keep 5 email addresses. One for family and friends, one for official business, the hotmail one for spam, and two to use when I want to download trial software for evaluation but don’t want to deal with the companies spamming me every day to buy now.
Keeps me sane.
Alex
I highly recommend unroll.me. For the first couple of weeks, it will suggest emails that should be added to the “Roll Up” (or you can leave those in your inbox, or unsubscribe from them (see below).
The site rolls these emails into a daily single viewable newsletter. If you want, you can scan this and click on the ones you want to view. If you don’t you never have to see the emails (the site marks them with a label (Unroll.me) and then takes them out of your inbox (they sit in your inbox for a couple of seconds and then disappear). But that way they are there if you ever need to search for them. I have a filter in gmail that puts a star on my daily Roll Up (I like to flip through it but you don’t have to if it’s truly spam for you). But now I do this once a day or every couple of days, instead of dealing with all day long.
If there are true emails you never need to see, you can mark them as Unsubscribe (this doesn’t really unsubscribe you — it just automatically filters those emails into Trash and then they’ll be gone when your Trash empties.
The benefit of all this is that 1) it’s much quicker to filter these using the unroll me site — you just click Roll up on all of the emails it suggests (you don’t have to do filter after filter in gmail); and 2) for the unsubscribes, it’s much faster than clicking through to all the sites.
Marduk
In case anyone here’s a n00b:
The only email you should give out to the inter webs is one you use a whitelist filter on. Hotmail is one that allows this but I’m sure most services do. Whitelisting makes you immune to spam, period, the end. At the same time you get all the emails you choose to get. When you feel the masochistic urge to read spam there’s always the junk folder.
patroclus
The Iranian foreign minister was mobbed by pro-diplomacy celebrations yesterday on arrival from Geneva and Rouhani put out his own Yes We Can video modeled almost directly upon Obama’s 2008 version. Vast swaths of Iran love the idea of rejoining the world and conducting diplomacy. Moreover, despite Congressional bleating from both Dems and Reps, the American people, in the polls vastly favor the new preliminary deal with Iran. Bibi and the neocon Likudniks can suck it – I am very much in favor of this new Berlin Wall falling moment brought on by Obama and Kerry. America, Fuck Yeah!
Another Holocene Human
@patroclus: That’s really good news.
hells littlest angel
If I ever meet Barack Obama, my first words to him will be, “Hey, it’s me, Ray.”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@patroclus:
Not surprised at all — I used to live and work in a part of Los Angeles that is heavily Iranian (aka Persian) and most of them still had pretty strong ties back in Iran. We weren’t The Great Satan because of what we stand for it whatever bullshit the Republicans kept pushing the last 30 years. We were The Great Satan because we kept fucking with their government (see also that asshole Kermit Roosevelt Jr).
Stacy
I use gmail’s tabbed interface and honestly it’s rare for these to end up in my real inbox. They mostly go to promotions, or occasionally updates, but it’s a lot less stressful than having them crowd out your personal mail.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/3055016?hl=en
I am not now (but have been in the past) a Google employee.
patroclus
@Another Holocene Human: This is a tremendous diplomatic breakthrough along the lines of the arrest and trial of the Gang of 4, the fall of apartheid and the collapse of the USSR. It’s hard to believe that the House voted almost 400-22 in favor of further sanctions – if the Senate were to act similarly, we would look extraordinarily foolish. Diplomacy and peace-making, Fuck Yeah!
Birthmarker
@Bubba Dave: Oh Bubba Dave…you are funny!!
My husband asked me if Al Franken was running for something down here!
patroclus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Under Obama, we aren’t the Great Satan anymore – now is the time for Iran to come to its senses and reach a comprehensive settlement across the full range of issues between them and the West. Bringing peace could vastly affect the oil markets favorably, stabilize the region, reduce support for terrorism and bring about an economic boom in a huge market that is ripe for modernization and free trade. Not to mention enhance security for Israel and all of other friends in the area. Iran was an ally of the U.S. for a loong time – it could be again.
Irony Abounds
My hotmail account is literally (nod to Joe Biden) full of 20 spam emails a day from Al Franken, the DSCC, the DCCC, and various other political organizations. Not to mention the calls. I also give to Habitat for Humanity, but I’m about ready to blow them off because they constantly are calling for more money. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that the two organizations I give the most to, which also provide the best service, in my opinion, do no more than send a few requests a year in the regular mail, don’t spam me and don’t call me. I can understand why some people become crotchety old men and women after a while because having organizations constantly asking asking asking, even after you’ve given, is off-putting to say the least.
fuckwit
+1 for setting up gmail filters. I have all that political spam siphoned off into a folder I check rarely. Skip Inbox. Move to folder. Done.
Also, unsubscribe works too.
As for Iran, this is awesome diplomacy work, but what the FUCK are the House Dems doing voting for more sanctions? Are they for real? What is that all about? That’s a veto-overridable supermajority.
I can only hope that the Senate kills that, and that if they don’t, Obama vetoes it and then the Dems get their shit together and vote NO on the override.
Or maybe the Congress is supposed to play bad cop, and Obama gets to play good cop. Much like the mullahs in Iran get to play bad cop, and the current government there gets to play good cop.
danielx
@SiubhanDuinne:
They are, because they’ve been at it a lot longer, a la Richard Viguerie. The concepts of personalized direct solicitation and cross referencing of mailing lists are nothing new to them, and email is about as personalized as it gets. Also, too, there are so damn many wingnut groups out there soliciting money for one cause or another, and generally all they have to do is gin up the invented outrage of the day. (Hey, get the Citizens for Prosperity mailing list, form a nonprofit of your own and watch (contributions roll in from) the defectives!)
Birthmarker
I don’t answer the phone if it is an unfamiliar number and out of our area code. If it is in our area code, as soon as I determine it is a solicitor I interrupt and say we are not interested thanks and hang up.
I also have multiple emails that I don’t use for anything but FB, online purchases, etc. If anything creepy drifts into my primary email I put it into the spam folder.
Really it is best to protect your primary email, b/c it will eventually be more important than your street address.
300baud
Last time I donated to the Democratic Party, I made them promise they wouldn’t spam me. Within a week, they started spamming. So I called up, demanded the donation back, and haven’t given them money since.
How hard is it to have a “please don’t contact me” checkbox? (Answer: easy.) But they don’t, becaue they see more money in manipulating people than treating them fairly.
It definitely keeps me from donating as much as I’d like to.
danielx
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Whaddya expect? That nice Mr. Mossadegh had the audacity to insist that they were going take control of our oil supply, upon which they just happened to live.
We couldn’t have that shit, although people do still speak reminiscently about nice, democratically-elected, Mr. Mossadegh.
Another Holocene Human
In honor of BUY NOTHING DAY I am planning to go to a local Walmart protest. There’s a page on Action Network where you can find one near you. They send me some emails, but they’re mostly invites to PROTESTS and reports on PROTESTS. The only time they asked for money was during a strike. (Which I sent.)
Direct action–now that’s awesome. (And if D’s were better at that we wouldn’t have the Summer of Death Panels, aka 2010, not that some of our individual D congresscritturs aren’t great.)
Darkrose
@Stacy: I loathe much of the Gmail redesign, but I love the tabbed Inbox. It’s made my life so much simpler. Living Social crap, restaurant promos, MLB sales–all go into Promotions and don’t make me think I have important mail.
Darkrose
@Stacy: I loathe much of the Gmail redesign, but I love the tabbed Inbox. It’s made my life so much simpler. Living Social crap, restaurant promos, MLB sales–all go into Promotions and don’t make me think I have important mail.
fuckwit
@Southern Beale: Thank Citizens United. It’s not one person one vote, it’s one dollar one vote. Dollars are all that matters. All that matters in the whole world is money. Money is everything. Political offices are won and lost because money. CREAM is what this all is. Money is speech. More money, more speech. No money, then fuck you. Money talks.
Forget it, Jake, it’s capitalism.
Another Holocene Human
@300baud: I actually dumped some charities for shit like this. Well respected charities that do good work, but were way, way too nasty about being intrusive and asking for money.
They do this shit on purpose, for example trying to get you to re-up a subscription when you’ve paid three years at once, or sending constant scare letters, etc.
I think they target senile people and that is really shitty.
You know who doesn’t suck? Innocence Project. They even save money by printing their annual brag (look who got freed this year) in b&w. When they send me mail, I read it.
NAACP, OTOH, sold my info to some shady operators. (I started giving them money under Jealous’ tenure b/c I thought he was doing good work. Now, of course, with the assaults on the VRA, I’m kind of captive. I’m not really, really pissed at NAACP over this, but, meh.)
Ann Marie
I’ve been forced by the flood of e-mail to unsubscribe from a lot of political lists for the same reasons John cites. When I unsubscribe and am given a chance to say why, I always complain about the annoyance of so many pleas for money. The ones that annoy me the most, however, are the ones that comment on how much I have given to date (my “supporter record” or some such thing) and have the unmitigated gall to tell me how much I should give. Seriously? I just find that over the top in obnoxiousness. For phone calls, the at least daily calls from effing Google to my office phone are the worst, with the constantly changing id’s and the same recorded message. I’ve gotten better at figuring out which are from Google finally and can avoid them, but I still get caught sometimes.
Bubblegum Tate
@TheMightyTrowel:
Yup, 4 email addresses for me. Over time, most of the separation among them has disappeared (i.e. business vs. personal email), except for one. It is my “spam account.” I do not use it to communicate with people I know. I use it solely for any sort of transaction on the interwebs that requires me to give an email address. That strategy has served me well for many years.
Mike L
@Southern Beale:
This this this 1000x this.
It’s not enough to vote and pay taxes, but I have to try to freaking give $$$ all the time ’cause it’s important that we outspend the other side. I’m done with politics. We the people have lost.
elaine benis
Catalogs.
We recently had our mail held for two weeks while traveling and came back to literally a two foot stack. Problematic since we’re planning on spending 3+ months abroad next year.
I’ve been trying to get off these mailing lists via Catalog Choice https://www.catalogchoice.org/ but since it takes three months for the effects to be felt I don’t know if it’s worth the effort. Also I’ve discovered that if you poke around the customer service section of a companies website, often you’ll find a mechanism to unsubscribe from emails/catalogs.
catclub
@fuckwit: I thought the reasonable Senate version includes a wait of six months
in implementation.
karen marie
@Southern Beale: My understanding is if you tell them to take you off their call list they will. Sometimes it takes twice but the second time, mention the attorney general. I have been successful.
ScottK
@normal liberal:
I do that too, and they think I mean that I don’t want to give payment information over the phone and assure me that they’ll send out a pledge card in the mail. When I tell them what I mean is “You called me on the phone, so you get nothing” they’re shocked like I just responded in Klingon or something.
Keith P
Everything?
Riccardo Cabeza
John Cole +5. Stop drinking
Gin & Tonic
@fuckwit: As for Iran, this is awesome diplomacy work, but what the FUCK are the House Dems doing voting for more sanctions?
AIPAC. SATSQ.
normal liberal
@ScottK:
I announce the same rule, that pestering me by phone means they get nothing. Then I say goodbye, politely, and hang up before they can launch into their next script.
It doesn’t stop the calls, and the stacks of mail. For some reason I don’t get much email. And we’re heading into the midterms…
Suffern ACE
@fuckwit: You have not been paying attention have you. Do you think the Senate voted to keep Gitmo open because it was secretly wanting to close it?
OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS ARE WARMONGERS, MUCH MORE SO THAN OUR POPULACE (but not by much).
Iran is not popular. I hope he can work something out, or our allies just dump us and start trading with Iran on their own.
The Other Chuck
I’m not out to defend the deluge of email blegs, but what’s the alternative? That they don’t ask for repeat donations at all? And it’s not like they’re spamming you out of the blue. If oversaturation is the problem, then they can get the message from unsubscribe requests, and if they ignore that or make it difficult, then by all means throw ’em in the spam folder.
Speaking of spam, anyone noticed gmail’s spam filter hasn’t been doing so well against Nigerian-type spam? I seem to get one every day while all the product-related spam still gets stopped.
While we’re in name-and-shame, I’m sorry to say the ACLU has been the worst about selling my name. I can tell because I got a joint membership with my girlfriend, and we’re getting all kinds of other mail with both our names on it now.
Original Lee
@cmorenc: The Rachel credit card people were sentenced for criminal wire fraud recently and the owner of the company was banned from telemarketing forever, IIRC. It might be worthwhile to report this to your state Better Business Bureau.
DLew On Roids
I think my email correspondence would drop by 50% if Michelle Obama and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz could just lose my address.
PurpleGirl
@Southern Beale: I get calls from a third party company trying to get me to leave Con Edison and buy electric service from another retailer. I used to patiently explain that my housing complex has its own power plant and I don’t have Con Edison service and to please take my name off their list. I even had a salesman at my door once also trying to pitch on another electric retailer. I told him about the power plant and told him that he might as well just leave the building and the complex because no one would be interested because… we own a power plant. The State AG’s office said I needed to name of the business for them to investigate.
Joshua Norton
One of the only good things about Yahell is they let you create disposable sub accounts off of you master one. I can create one named [email protected], use it only for donations and then blow it away when it gets too much out of control and create [email protected]. Not only do you maintain control over your email account, but you can pretty much figure out who’s giving you email addy out when strange stuff starts showing up. Works like a charm.
YellowJournalism
@Suzanne: Same thing happened with my Hubby’s name. Keeps looking for someone that isn’t there. I wonder if Siri is cheating on us with another phone user.
Now I just say, “Siri, call my husband.”
maeve
Word!
Tammy – as much as I supported her and the idea that there should be more vet’s who really know the score in congress – STOP SENDING ME EMAIL!!!!
I tried to unsubscribe, but the unsubscribe link only gets me to her website with no unsubscribe info!
Maisie, Elizabeth, – I supported women candidates but I don’t live in Hawaii or Massachusetts.,
Tim in SF
I’m a bit late to this thread, but I hope people still read this.
Since you’re in Gmail, John, there is a very simple solution. When you get an email you don’t want, don’t delete it, instead, click the stop-sign with the exclamation point on it: Report Spam. Many, many bulk emailers have an arrangement with spamcop and/or gmail so that if you report it as spam, you are automatically unsubscribed (without having to go through the unsubscribe process, which is neither standardized nor quick). If the sender is NOT registered with spamcop or Gmail, then Gmail will simply blacklist the sender and then anything else from that sender is automatically shit-canned.
One click.
HeartlandLiberal
This is why I take advantage of the fact I run my own email server. For 90% of business or other activity, I create a unique account. Then if it is ever abused, I just delete it, and any mail to it bounces back to sender.
For political activity online, I usually use one account reserved for that.
And that sucker fills up every day. I have not looked at it since Nov 21. For Nov 22 – 26, it has received 80 emails.
For one of my primary actual identity accounts, which I use only with friends and my former employee from where I retired, I made the mistake of giving it to the Democratic campaign committees. And now hardly a day goes by without the latest breathless warning that unless I give them $3 a day for the rest of my life the world will end.
It does get old. And loses its effectiveness.
They tried a few times calling on the phone. My wife and I took turns reaming them out and threatening never another dime, so after a few times that finally stopped that.
JoyfulA
@Southern Beale: I live in a Republican area, and I get bunches of GOP junk mail and some phone calls. They must not bother with street lists. They don’t have my email address, though.
My father got a huge (> a pound) GOP piece of junk mail asking for money, and he’s been a Democrat since the 1930s.
So yes, if we were actual Republicans, we’d be bombarded without mercy.
R-Jud
@Bubba Dave:
Dead thread for sure, but I COL’d (cackled out loud).
Gindy51
@CaseyL: I have six different emails I use for stuff. I also have a false email set up to give for those pesky donation sites. Sure I give them money but I do not want their spam nor have to take the time to opt out.
One of the worst is Breck’s Bulbs (a retail site but still), I can’t tell you how many times I have asked them to take me off their stupid mailing list. Now I use Mailwasher to bounce them back and have all of them listed as spammers in my web mail accounts.
as for phone calls, telling them the person has died or left due to being divorced usually helps. They will try to get your cash but if you tell them to fuck off and remove you from the lists they do it. same with those police benevolent society calls.
mm
I’m using a great service called sanebox. (url below). It analyzes your inbox and segregates your mail into inbox, sanelater and sanearchive. You can train it by moving items from folder to folder.
They’ll do it for free for two weeks and if you don’t want to subscribe they’ll just put everything back like it was.
I hate to hit “unsubscribe” on emails because in many cases that just tells the spammer that you’re a live address and you’ll get even more spam.
Boy have they saved me time.
Here’s their invite:
Hi,
Knowing how much email all of us get, I thought you would appreciate SaneBox. I’ve been using SaneBox to fix my email overload and I love it. You will too.
If you use this invitation URL, you will get a free 2 weeks trial and $5 in SaneBox credit: http://sanebox.com/t/czolu
low-tech cyclist
@TheMightyTrowel:
Absolutely. I use my Yahoo email for any online purchases and donations, and my primary Gmail address is only for family, friends, and my son’s school. I have a second Gmail address I use as my blogging/blog commenting email. And of course I have a work email through my employer.
OK, that’s only four email addresses in my case, but close enough.
cain
wow sorry to see everyone’s experience so bad. I suggest you use the multiple inbox option in gmail. I never see that shit anymore. you do have to look occasionally because it sorts everything related to promotions both good and bad. but at least it is by choice.
set it up Google search gmail and multiple in boxes.
kindness
I use Yahoo mail with my AT&T account. I’ve taken to adding groups I like and donate to to my spam filter. If they are going to fuck with me like that I’m just going to ban their asses from my in box.
Ecks
I’m sure this thread is long dead, but here’s the game to play next time someone calls from a genuinely worth organization:
Ask the caller if they, personally, really believe in this cause. Get them to explain at length, why they, PERSONALLY, really care. Then try to convince them to donate $100 of their pay in your name. Because, clearly if it’s so important to them…
Snark Based Reality
It’s 2013. There is already a major chunk of computing capacity dedicated to trying to figure out which emails you might want to see and which should be shoved down a black hole never to be seen again. We’re not quite at the point where the NSA Googleplex understands your wants and needs 100% yet. It’s up to you to tell the computer what is relevant to you.
So if you’re a Gmail user there are two things that you can do to greatly improve the situation:
#1: Turn on Gmail’s category tabs. Click the gear icon and select “customize” and turn all of the tabs on. When you do this Gmail will attempt to figure out what type of email an incoming email is in and place it in the appropriate tab. This means all of those shopping advertisements and order updates will be moved out of your primary INBOX and into the “Promotions” and “Updates” tabs.
If you disagree with how Google categorized an email then just drag and drop the offending email onto the tab label and Google learns.
#2: If you absolutely don’t want to see an email from a sender ever again DO NOT DELETE IT, DO NOT HIT THAT UNSUBSCRIBED LINK, Hit the fucking SPAM button. It’s that button with the stop sign with the exclamation point. That button should be labeled the “Fuck Off” button. Just hit that on anything you never want to see again and Google will start filing that sender directly into the spam folder assuming it doesn’t just shitcan the email completely. It might take a couple hits of the “Fuck Off” button for certain senders but Google will get the hint.
Do these two things and in a couple weeks your gmail account will be a dramatically better and organized place.
Then you can set up your phone to actually notify on real emails by only allowing notifications for only the “Primary INBOX” label and get far less beeps in your life.
Snark Based Reality
It’s 2013. There is already a major chunk of computing capacity dedicated to trying to figure out which emails you might want to see and which should be shoved down a black hole never to be seen again. We’re not quite at the point where the NSA Googleplex understands your wants and needs 100% yet. It’s up to you to tell the computer what is relevant to you.
So if you’re a Gmail user there are two things that you can do to greatly improve the situation:
#1: Turn on Gmail’s category tabs. Click the gear icon and select “customize” and turn all of the tabs on. When you do this Gmail will attempt to figure out what type of email an incoming email is in and place it in the appropriate tab. This means all of those shopping advertisements and order updates will be moved out of your primary INBOX and into the “Promotions” and “Updates” tabs.
If you disagree with how Google categorized an email then just drag and drop the offending email onto the tab label and Google learns.
#2: If you absolutely don’t want to see an email from a sender ever again DO NOT DELETE IT, DO NOT HIT THAT UNSUBSCRIBED LINK, Hit the fucking SPAM button. It’s that button with the stop sign with the exclamation point. That button should be labeled the “Fuck Off” button. Just hit that on anything you never want to see again and Google will start filing that sender directly into the spam folder assuming it doesn’t just shitcan the email completely. It might take a couple hits of the “Fuck Off” button for certain senders but Google will get the hint.
Do these two things and in a couple weeks your gmail account will be a dramatically better and organized place.
Then you can set up your phone to actually notify on real emails by only allowing notifications for only the “Primary INBOX” label and get far less beeps in your life.
Snark Based Reality
Oh Fuck You WordPress.
LongHairedWeirdo
First: I sympathize. I really do.
Second: It’s the nature of fundraising that if someone is giving until it hurts, you frequently ask them if they’d like to give more, because they might be filthy rich and you need the money. I hate it – but it *is* the nature of the beast.
Third: The Do Not Call doesn’t apply if there’s a business relationship established, alas. Otherwise, if you did a lot of work for PersonX, you couldn’t call PersonX up and say “Hey, I was wondering if you had anything planned in the next few months.”
Be very generous with your unsubscribes – legitimate organizations tend to honor them. If they don’t, send them scornful e-mails, and *cut all ties*. Seriously. And tell them why. “I asked you to leave me alone, and you wouldn’t. I’m sorry, I appreciate the work you do, but you violated common courtesy.”
Birthmarker
Here is some info on ActBlue-this is from a footnote on Wikipedia…
ActBlue is a not-for-profit organization. ActBlue officially incurs costs of 3.95% of the gross contribution, and those fees are passed on to campaigns. ActBlue’s sister company, ActBlue Technology Services derives the bulk of the income by charging ActBlue 3.9% on all transaction but paying a much lower rate to the merchant banks on those transaction fees.
It looks like they charge the campaigns 3.95 %, plus retain the difference between a 3.9% transaction fee and the actual transaction fee.
Birthmarker
I’ve read somewhere that email solicitations are highly effective. That’s why we are bombarded.
tommy dee
Everybody, establish a separate email or two for contacts with those who are not personal friends.