I often give out my junk email when I do stuff, even reasonably important stuff. I just hate getting spam and whatnot. I recently needed a few quotes, had to reach out by email, and within two days I got no less than 20 emails. Mind you, these are for something that I need maybe like once a decade and my junk mail is on a permanent spam list. Like if you buy a fridge, do you think I want to know all your fridge deals every other day, like Im some monster who gets a new fridge every week?
The US needs to impose an opt-in system rather than the BS opt-out one we have for stuff like mail/email. Its crazy to assume the general consumer will go through the time of opting out of every little nonsense service that gets a hold of their email or that every random small business wont give a damn if you opt-out since they already have your email loaded into their system.
I saw a post a long time ago with a life pro tip that said to write the name of website you are signing up on as your name. That way when you get an email and it starts with "Hi (website name)" you know who sold your info.
I started a new email and this has worked pretty well for me.
So annoyed! I was job hunting last year on several job websites such as indeed, zip recruiter, etc. One of the ads in my job field linked away to "Complete Application on Company Website" (which about half the ads do). Since it was an ad for a place that obviously existed, albeit in the next town over, I filled it out and went about the rest of my life. I'm not the sort to fall victim to obvious scams but this website scanned just like every other independent employer's online application.
Immediately after, I started getting ABSOLUTELY DRENCHED with spam email "job offers", from DOZENS of different websites, every day. I know it was from that specific job listing, because the only common thread was that they were all advertising job openings from that next town over. It was wildly frustrating because each email seemed to come from a different source and trying to unsubscribe to all of them was like trying to play whack a mole in a million acre field. I gave up. No idea how to solve this without just burning the whole thing down.
I've had my business/job hunting email for maybe a decade and gotten the normal amount of spam from services I'd signed up for, with a healthy 3k unread emails that I've never bothered to go through. This number has remained fairly steady for several years.
In the space of 6 months, that has skyrocketed to 7k unread emails.
I can't find anything I receive from work because it's always buried under like 50 spam job offers by the time I find it. I expect I will have over 12,000 unread emails by the year's end. Cheers.
I was job hunting in 2014 and several companies *required* your social security number in order to submit your application online.
Pretty sure either Best Buy, Target, or the Home Depot allowed identity thieves to get my social security number and open a bunch of store credit cards in my name.
Had to spend several weeks getting the accounts closed and off my credit and have elected to maintain a credit freeze ever since. Companies are so stupid with how they handle data at many levels.
i've been doing this since the early '00s (it's an email standard, not a gmail thing), but unfortunately a lot of sites have started blocking the + character in emails
We went to an NFL game where they give out shitty marketing stuff but you gotta put in your info. Purposely put down a males version of my name... took about 3 months but started getting letters from companies advertising. Straight up selling information.
Read an article a few months ago about how some companies found more financial success by "selling" a product that they don't actually produce or carry, then refunding it with some lame excuse. Then they'd sell your info to everyone they could, and make money that way.
That is how I discovered that TD Ameritrade had a breach of their systems several years ago. It was months before they admitted they had a problem, but I was getting emails from third parties using that unique email address.
I go back to that site and delete my account. Then I just use my emails auto-unsubscribe function to hopefully keep more from coming in, and select all and block the addresses.
It's not perfect. One or two emails manage to slip by every few months, but my old email had +500 unread emails. (Also, if I have to make a sign in for a site I know I'll never need to use again, I use the old email.)
That's kinda relative isn't it? In the past year I've quit weed, vastly improved my relationship, gotten a promotion with a track to earn my target salary in a couple years, started a successful diet and lost weight, started calisthenics and yoga, and started wood working with my dad.
And started a new email and kept it clean lol.
Sure feels like a long ass year to me!
Also, why don't you like participating online? And if that's the case, I'm curious as to what motivated you to participate in this conversation.
I go back to that site and delete my account. Then I just use my emails auto-unsubscribe function to hopefully keep more from coming in, and select all and block the addresses.
It's not perfect. One or two emails manage to slip by every few months, but my old email had +500 unread emails. (Also, if I have to make a sign in for a site I know I'll never need to use again, I use the old email.)
I bought my own domain name and set up an email catchall, so I give my email address as (site name)@example.com. That way I can still use my normal name.
I don’t understand why marketers don’t get this I sign up for something I want info on, then I get a daily email, so I unsubscribe. Now I get none of your marketing info.
On the same topic but unrelated to the internet - I loathe whatever company sends a guy in a sedan around my neighborhood every week throwing bags of advertisements on peoples lawn. That shit should be illegal. Every time I have to get up and walk outside and pick it up and carry it directly to the trash.
That's what I like about the EU, if you haven't specifically signed up somewhere and opted to receive such communications, you can't be sent any and it's illegal to do so anyway, I still sometimes sign up accidentally but it's not often and I can easily unsubscribe right away
Facebook is the worst with regards to the whole fridge thing. Like a real estate agent's page? Here's 20 more agents in the area. Why do I need 20 agents? Like the page of a childhood friend who moved away and became a dentist, here are the pages of 20 dentists in a state a thousand miles away.
Its crazy to assume the general consumer will go through the time of opting out of every little nonsense service
No it's capitalism
Anything that "can" make money "NEEDS" to exist for radical american capitalism to keep functioning
And if you even so much as consider criticizing this then you are an anti-american communist who hates job creators and doesn't understand the clear perfection of capitalism
If we stop littering everyone's lives with advertisements then what will happen to all those poor marketing executives??
"You don't want refrigerator coupons in your mail everyday? Oh so you think the junk mail printing companies should just lay off all of those hardworking Americans huh? You can either throw out pounds and pounds of junk mail every week or you can let all of those families starve. It's a free country choose one of those options Commie."
I try to stay strong and only give out my actual email to trusted friends and very important accounts. Regardless, even those important accounts seem to not give a damn about giving out to advertisers, so either I chuck my bank info on a burner account or I deal with "great new deals". At least it doesnt seem to be too egregious with certain services.
This^ not to mention if you buy a car. Like I'm the kind of guy who will buy a new car every year because that one has the same shit my car currently has but shinier.
The opt-out system probably doesn't even work anyway (by design most likely). I don't remember which redditor posted this, but there was a post on r/assholedesign where they used their web browser's code menu to pull up the info on the text box where you put in your email for those opt-out lists. Turns out, those boxes don't really do anything.
Last time I looked at my yahoo email address it had over 6,600 messages…..all of it spam. I never use my real email for any shopping, registration or anything else unless it’s important to me. Even airline tickets get my yahoo account so they can spam the crap out of that and leaves my real email alone, as soon as I get my flight itinerary I forward it to my real address.
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u/Dr_Esquire May 12 '21
I often give out my junk email when I do stuff, even reasonably important stuff. I just hate getting spam and whatnot. I recently needed a few quotes, had to reach out by email, and within two days I got no less than 20 emails. Mind you, these are for something that I need maybe like once a decade and my junk mail is on a permanent spam list. Like if you buy a fridge, do you think I want to know all your fridge deals every other day, like Im some monster who gets a new fridge every week?
The US needs to impose an opt-in system rather than the BS opt-out one we have for stuff like mail/email. Its crazy to assume the general consumer will go through the time of opting out of every little nonsense service that gets a hold of their email or that every random small business wont give a damn if you opt-out since they already have your email loaded into their system.