Return to my Complaint Department
Go to my home page
© Copyright 2000, Jim Loy
Spam is the popular name for junk email (unsolicited commercial email) on the Internet. Here are some companies which have sent me spam. They provided removal instructions (supposedly designed to help me remove my email address from their mailing list) which did not work. They produced a "Returned mail, user unknown" message, or something similar. A couple of these did not provide removal instructions, but still keep sending me spam. I list the most frequent offenders first:
Others have no company name (wouldn't they sell more if they had a company name?), just a phone number. Some provide a phone number for removal. Some of these phone numbers are toll-free, some are not. Some recommend that you just delete the offending email, very sensible. At least two of the above companies are fairly large: Electronic Arts, and Information Plus. The following give no address.
Here is an interesting idea for removing your email address from mailing lists: OptList.com registration. I have registered there. I hope it works.
Addendum #1:
Why can't I remove my email address from the above mailing lists? A few of the above were probably lying; they never intended to remove. Others were probably the victims of a similar lie; they bought the mailing list, and were unaware that the remove instructions did not work. Most of the above probably fully intended to remove my email address, but their Internet providers shut them down because they were swamped by the huge volume of remove requests, or because of compaints about spam.
Addendum #2:
One interesting piece of spam began:
Enter The "I Love/Hate SpamMail Opinion Poll" Now
Hi,
A Poll is being taken to settle the issue whether commercial e-mail or SPAM is a good form of advertisement, which you would like more of or it's a bad form of advertisement which you are against.
This email then tells how great spam is, and then tells you how stupid you are if you are against spam:
Anti Spam arguments go something like this: They don't like it.
Some genuinely want to be isolated fromthe world, others it seems are simply being mislead. Spammers steal services and don't really pay for access, Spammers are evil because the big, rich, powerful, largeinternet service providers say so, and it's OK to targetthem for all kinds of bad things, legal or not. They don't like it.
And would rather have themselves and consumers everywhere continue to pay high inflated prices so that the Robber Barons may grow even richer and more powerful.
And finally, much like the Nazi's final solution to the Jewish problem, they are willing to act as the RobberBaron's Gestapo, ready to report for termination any Spammers or Spam sympathizers.
SIMPLE SOLUTION: Press the delete key, STUPID !
Does that sound like a poll? No, pure spam. Taking the "poll" takes $1.99 per minute, on a 900 phone number. And, of course, you cannot get off their email list.