I am not an ophthalmologist, nor even a medical doctor of any flavor whatsoever. But starting around five months ago I began receiving emails with sender-names and subject lines like these (this set fetched from today’s inbox):
Ophthalmology at NYU Langone
Join NYU Langone’s Ophthalmology Grand Rounds
Paradigm Medical Communications
OPHTHALMOLOGY SPECIAL EDITION SEPTEMBER 2025
Ophthalmology Management
Your Patients Are Skipping Drops—Here’s a Seamless Way to Stop It
Retina from The Ophthalmologist
Can AI predict eye damage before it happens?
engagephysicians.newsletter.broadcastmed dot com
Updates in Ophthalmology
I didn’t sign up or register for any such newsletters, services, sites. I do not go to an ophthalmologist.
You figure it’s maybe the kind of profession where any time they get a doctor’s email address they immediately sell it to some master list of eye doctors, and someone typo’d their email address as mine? Or do you think it more likely that someone chose a strange way of poking at me with amusement and malice?
I’ve gotten some odd types of spam email over the years but rarely such a thick cluster all focused on a topic so thoroughly irrelevant to me. (Not counting subtypes of porn and sexual aids… I think everyone gets all of those whether they wish to meet cute Asian ladies or have a penis to enlarge or not).
Congratulations! Someone thinks you’re an ophthalmologist. Keep blocking/ignoring/deleting this spam, and at some point, it will stop being sent to you. You were somehow added to the list, and it will take many months/years before the list is updated and you disappear from it.
Both of those possibilities came to my own mind – someone with a similar name and an email account on the same domain made a typo that matched my email address, or someone invented an email address to avoid giving out their own. Also the possibility that it was more personal, but who the hell gets revenge or a sense of sticking it to the dude by signing them up for ophthalmology correspondence?
I used to get regular emails for 2 different people who somehow kept using my email address. One was a Canadian mother whose son is a representative hockey goalie, the other was a Vietnam vet helicopter pilot. They have stopped now though.
But, while I’m posting, would the OP recommend that I keep using the eyedrops for my glaucoma or just bite the bullet and have the laser surgery?
I get endless spam from people who claim they have seen my web site and want a list of products I could sell them. I am tempted to tell them I can provide cartesian products, tensor products, fiber products, and even shuffle products. I have refrained from doing so as it might encourage them.
A little googling can readily determine whether any particular url is legit or unknown. Can’t prove it scammy, but can prove it legit. So unsubscribe from the provably legit. And configure a filter to delete the rest.
Your rose-colored glasses are showing again. If we squint just right, it’s easy to read the facts just as they are. And they spell out DEFPOTEC. Revenge works in strange and wondrous ways.
What you are experiencing is what happened to me in the ‘80s. I made myself an enemy, and he constantly placed my info in every postage -paid ad he saw. I received spam (in snail-mail form) for the next 2 years when I moved to another city and it finally stopped.
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