Morgyn, I don’t claim to be an expert on email issues. But I have seen distribution lists with identifiable addresses in the “To” section. I have also looked at “source” information in email headers which identified other recipients who were not visible in the normally viewed sections. If either of those types of messages go through unethical servers set up to hijack addresses or get bounced to somebody carrying viruses that steal addys, then the addresses are compromised.
Kalhoun may have suggested a good tactic though. Martha could script a message which appears to be a mass mailing. You know, start it out with “to all my friends and associates”, but just mail it to the SIL.
I haven’t tried it yet myself, but my SO swears by Mail Washer.
The wife of my SO’s best friend used to deluge my inbox with junk as well. Mostly, it was “For good luck, send to this to everyone in your address book…” crap. Puh-lease. I finally emailed her back asking her to stop sending me this as I don’t have time for it and it was flooding my inbox. She was mad for awhile and stopped emailing me altogether. Can’t say I’m all that disappointed.
I like the idea of letting her know via the “I’m sorry, I didn’t see your important email amid all the garbage. How about a break?” Unless you don’t get any important email from her. In that case, you’ll love Mail Washer! You can block her and delete the email before you even download it!
You mean NO gravity or LESS gravity? Correct me if I`m wrong, but there is always gravity as long as you have at least two bodies of mass somewhere in the universe.
I get the usual recycled-forwarded-junk E-mail from a trio of distant relatives. Probably about 20 per week total, so far no damaging meterial.
But, since I love them (the relatives) and Ive got a cable modem it isnt an issue. I usually just delete the E-mail or give it a quick read to see if its anything that may amuse me. On the rare occasion there may even be some helpful informative subject matter or a joke that Ive actually never heard before.
Since it isnt a problem and I dont want to hurt feelings I havent done anything about it.
Use the delete option liberally.
I wish I still had a this fake delete program that would act like it was deleting the contents of your Windows Directory. You send it as an attachment and the thing would run for about 15 seconds and then time out. It was pretty funny to hear about how people reacted while seeing it run on their machine. Harmless fun. It would be a cool thing to send to your SIL.
What is the deal with the same person forwarding both the dirty jokes and the god-bothering? I have to say I find this very incongruous. Humorous, but incongruous.
Just want to add my two-cents’ worth. Recently received a very short e-mail at work from a colleague. It went like this:
THIS MESSAGE ISN’T REALLY VERY URGENT AND CERTAINLY NOT VERY LONG. IT IS MAYBE A SENTENCE OR TWO. THE WRITER KNEW BETTER BUT ENDED BY SAYING SORRY, I’M NOT YELLING I JUST FORGOT TO TURN OFF THE CAPS LOCK.
Okay, by the time they added the disclaimer, wouldn’t it have been easier to actualy TURN OFF the caps lock and FIX the dad-gummed message?
If she’s still sending you large unwelcome attachments, check your e-mail program for an option or preference along the lines of “Do not download e-mail over ‘x’ K.” I use Eudora and it has this feature. I have it set to 20K. That way I can download all my regular e-mail, and if someone sends me an attachment and I want to receive it, I can download it later when I have time. (The e-mail’s sender and subject comes through, but the file remains on the server until it is deleted or downloaded.)
Anyone who actually forwards spam should get 40 lashes with their phone/LAN cord. And that cord doesn’t get plugged back into the computer until they convincingly demonstate they learned the error of their ways.
My brother-in-law is like your sister-in-law, Martha. I’ve set his email address to “file directly in trash” - the emails are still there, and I can go check to see if he ever sends anything worth looking at, but mostly I just let them sit there in trash until I empty it. I don’t seem to be missing much.
I haven’t heard a peep since I sent the message this morning. If the moratorium proves to be permanent I will declare victory.
Yes, matt_mcl, good question. Worthy of a thread in itself, working title ‘How can I respect a person’s beliefs when they don’t seem to go beyond bumper-stickers and twee e-mails?’
Bubba, Morgyn, the option to “send without letting any of the recipients see the rest of the mailing list” is called Blind Carbon Copy (Or “courtesy copy”. Your choice), also known as “bcc”. Every mailer should have that option, though it’s not always necessarily obvious. It’s an invaluable tool in cases like this, where you want to send something to a large group of people but don’t want one or more of them to go email harvesting.
Or, as in this case, to send what appears to be a group e-mail to one person so that they don’t take the message too personally. In my SIL’s case I doubt she would get the subtlety. She is not a bcc-er herself.
Update! After over a week of total silence and welcome respite since I sent the first warning, I got another forwarded spam message from SIL today (true to form it arrived twice at each of my e-mail addresses). I sent this reply, bcc-ed but only to her:
Can anyone suggest a name for this virus? TWIT.SIL?
While I have no particular suggestions for a made-up virus name… (I wonder if that’s how some of those virus hoaxes get started? ) … I eagerly await further news of this Sister-in-Law’s behavior after the block.
I suggest that you call it the dumbfuck virus. as in Dumbfuck.exe.
What would make this perfect would be if she called the IT guy to find and clean her machine of the dumbfuck virus.
Damned hamsters, ate my first post. I think; apologies in advance if it comes through twice.
I had a friend like that, too, an elderly man who sent me all kinds of glurge – not in large quantities, but it was never anything I wanted to open. Religious, funny, oversized, he sent it all. And it was always forwards, so it always came through as an attachment, so I just never opened it. But I also never wanted to hurt his feelings by telling him to stop sending it, so I’d just delete it unread.
Then he died a few weeks ago. It’s strange how you can miss getting emails from someone that you never opened, but it’s true. I actually went and looked in my mail program to see if there were any that I’d overlooked deleting, just so I could delete them one last time. Sigh.
I was getting a deluge of junk e-mails from an uncle and finally blocked his e-mail. He was pissed but I told him I was simply too busy with work and school e-mails to sort through and read non-important e-mails so I block all fowards. For some reasons this made perfect sense to him and he was no longer bothered by being blocked.
As for fonts and caps, my father is the king of badly spelled, weird font, all caps e-mails. He would e-mail his state representative in size 20 royal purple font with dozens of exclamation marks and all sorts of typos and mistakes. By mistakes, I mean things like attributing the quotes of one person to someone else. I finally told him he was making himself look bad and he threatened to kill me. I guess he was sort of touchy about his e-mails.
Deepest sympathies…Both my parents are 80 years old, and I got them a computer about 5 years ago, and taught them how to go online and handle emails as well. Because of my dad’s macular degeneration and other vision issues, I set the font size very large so he can see what he is typing, and to remind me to reset my font large when I respond. I dread the day when I dont get my daily hello from them … luckily, they have never seen fit to foreward spam or glurge to me but that is probably because I taught them not to foreward things without asking first. Not to mention, they dont have a lot of online correspondants, it is mainly email to me and assorted other family and surfing the net looking for hobby stuff [they both like to putter around the house and do gardening and small building projects=)]
) … I eagerly await further news of this Sister-in-Law’s behavior after the block.