werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) (07/26/88)
within the last 3 days I received 2 messages by personal e-mail,
which are clearly of the "junkmail" variety: one from Portal and one
from the "newly founded" Unix Today editor (who had the guts to ask me,
in good old junkmail fashion, for my life-story, including current
salary, for a "planned survey article on industry salaries" - he even
offered to keep the information confidential - HA!!)
I sent back a CLEARLY worded reply, explaining my displeasure, but
knowing how ineffective I have been discouraging telephone solicita-
tion calls, I believe that there is a need to find a way to discourage
"future" reoccurences ...not from the same people, who I trust will
respect my wishes never to hear from them again (though they may well
write to *YOU* next week..), but from the next "smart cookie"
who discovers that this is a cheap way of doing advertising
"on someone else's dime" ... or go prowl the nets for a "sucker"
...after all, some of my best friends are "suckers" ...(-:
"...just another reduction of quality of life on this net ..."
--
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(UUCP) ...{backbone-sites}!cs.utexas.edu!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!wernerkoreth@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Steven Grimm) (07/26/88)
In article <2943@utastro.UUCP> werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) writes: >within the last 3 days I received 2 messages by personal e-mail, >which are clearly of the "junkmail" variety > >I sent back a CLEARLY worded reply, explaining my displeasure, but >knowing how ineffective I have been discouraging telephone solicita- >tion calls, I believe that there is a need to find a way to discourage >"future" reoccurences ... E-mail is better than real mail in that you can reply with 500 "STOP SENDING ME JUNK MAIL" messages (easy to do with a script), or, worse still, 50 copes of the rec.humor canonical lightbulb joke list. Hmm, on second thought, I guess that's cruel and unusual punishment. --- These are my opinions, and in no way reflect those of UCSC, which are wrong. Steven Grimm Moderator, comp.{sources,binaries}.atari.st koreth@ssyx.ucsc.edu ...!ucbvax!ucscc!ssyx!koreth
webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (07/26/88)
In article <2943@utastro.UUCP>, werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) writes:
< within the last 3 days I received 2 messages by personal e-mail,
< which are clearly of the "junkmail" variety: one from Portal and one
< from the "newly founded" Unix Today editor ...
< I sent back a CLEARLY worded reply, explaining my displeasure, but
< knowing how ineffective I have been discouraging telephone solicita-
< tion calls, I believe that there is a need to find a way to discourage
< "future" reoccurences ...not from the same people, who I trust will
< respect my wishes never to hear from them again (though they may well
< write to *YOU* next week..), but from the next "smart cookie"
< who discovers that this is a cheap way of doing advertising
< "on someone else's dime" ... or go prowl the nets for a "sucker"
On the Arpanet, the tradition was to send the junkmailer a copy of the
online lisp documentation. On Usenet, faking a few sendsyses in their
name seems to be developing a tradition. Originally people avoided
this because of its obvious annoyance to the intermediate sites, but
now that the Backbone sanctions such usage of the net, it would appear
to be open season. Who knows, if they get enough junk they may
actually have to drop off the net due to phone bills or difficulty in
finding a feed. While you might think that this would be ineffective
in your case, just remember that the junkmail you recieve today was
probably sent to someone else yesterday who didn't do anything to make
them think that such was improper usage of the net (3 points to the first
person to correctly dereference all the pronouns in this sentence).
---- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)lindberg@cs.chalmers.se (Gunnar Lindberg) (08/26/88)
In various articles people have suggested various kinds of "punishment"
for "junk-mailers", e.g. sending them a hex-dump of your Lisp-system.
Unfortunately such a thing is exactly what the "junk-mailer" does -
sending somebody "junk-mail", ":-)" and ":-(".
In fact, I think silence is the best weapon, no reply, nothing, just
feed it to "/dev/null". Our "/dev/null" is unlimited :-).
Gunnar Lindberg
Department of Computer Science
Chalmers University of Technology
S-412 96 Gothenburg, SWEDEN
lindberg@cs.chalmers.se
..!uunet!enea!chalmers!cs.chalmers.se!lindberg