I think I’m being stalked.

in Marketing gone bad, Random Crap

Email from company I’ve never heard of before:  DEAR JEMMY, DON’T MISS OUT ON TODAY’S EXCLUSIVE SPECIALS!

me:  ::Clicks unsubscribe button::

Their website:  To unsubscribe you must go to this webpage to update your email preference.

me:  ::Unchecks the EIGHTEEN types of email notifications that I never signed up for::

Their website: OH NO, JEMMY!  YOU HAVE UNSELECTED ALL EMAILS FROM US!  YOU WILL MISS OUR AMAZEBALLS EXCLUSIVE DEALS!  ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THAT?  PLEASE CONFIRM.

me:  “Miss” is not the word I’d use here.  Or “amazeballs” non-ironically.  ::Clicks the confirm button::

Their website:  We are sure this is a mistake on your part.  We are sending you an email asking you to confirm that you want to unsubscribe.

me: wtf.

Their new email: Jemmy, we don’t want to alarm you but we believe some scoundrel may have hacked into your account to take away your access to our great daily offers.  If this was not you, please ignore.  Your notifications will continue uninterrupted   If it was you please click here to unsubscribe.

me:  ::clicks::

Their website again:  Hello again!   You aren’t attempting to leave us, are you?  We want you to be happy.  Please use the comment box to tell us why you are considering unsubscribing so we can fix these issues and keep you as a customer.

me:  BITCH, ARE YOU EVEN SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?

Their website:  You entered : “BITCH ARE YOU EVEN SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?”  Thank you for your feedback!  One of our customer service representatives will be contacting you as soon as possible to help!  

me: Is this hell?

Their newest email:  Hello, Jemmy!  This is an automated response confirming your concern of “BITCH ARE YOU EVEN SERIOUS RIGHT NOW“.  Please do not reply to this automated email.  A representative will be contacting you by email in the next 48 hours for follow-up.  While you’re waiting, be sure to check out today’s exclusive specials!  If you would like to opt out of these emails click UNSUBSCRIBE here.

me: ::Stares at the screen for a full minute.  Clicks “UNSUBSCRIBE”::

Their website:  This account has been locked due to suspicious activity of TRIED TO UNSUBSCRIBE AFTER ALREADY UNSUBSCRIBED.  The original setting of RECEIVE ALL EXCLUSIVE EMAIL OFFERS will be reinstated on this account.  If you believe this is an error please click this link for help.

me: ::Clicks link.  With hammer::

Their website:  Thank you for being a valued customer!  Please check your email for further instructions!  Don’t forget to check out today’s exclusive offers!

Their email:  Dear Jemmy.  You are very persistent!  Just like our desire to give you great exclusive daily deals!  We have so much in common.  We belong together.

me:  ::crying::  Why are you doing this?

Their email:  Dear Jemmy:  Perhaps we weren’t clear.  You can never leave.  We love you.  Check out our exclusive daily offers!  As a valued customer today only we’re offering free shipping  if you click here to authorize access to all of your contacts and social media accounts. 

me:  WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING?  NO.  MY NAME ISN’T EVEN JEMMY.  IT’S JENNY.  

Their email:    Your name has been updated in our system.  Thank you for being a team player, Jelly!  Enclosed is your coupon code for free shipping.  Offer is only valid last year on chainsaws that have been recalled for safety reasons.  Be sure to check out our exclusive daily deals!  Please note that your access to email and social media accounts has been locked for 24 hours as there seems to be someone masquerading as you trying to unsubscribe to your account.  Your safety is our priority.

My Facebook status: CLICK THIS LINK TO CHECK OUT THE FANTASTIC OFFERINGS FROM THIS AWESOME SHOP!  YOU WON’T TOTALLY PROBABLY WON’T REGRET IT!  BE SURE TO SIGN UP FOR EMAILS BECAUSE THEIR EXCLUSIVE DAILY DEALS ARE AMAZEBALLS!   LOVE, JELLY.

*end scene*

PS.  It is shocking how little of this is hyperbole.

149 thoughts on “I think I’m being stalked.”

Read comments below or add one.

  1. It’s like the Hotel California of websites, isn’t it? You can log in, but you can never leave!

  3. Yep, someone is secretly although not secretly enamoured by you and is now sending you constant e-mails hoping to look like spam only they want to get to know you. Or maybe it’s Victor they really want to know 😂

  4. Oh, Jemmy! Sounds like you’ve checked into the Hotel California! Sucks to be you lol. This makes me feel better about not being on social media.

  5. Hurts from laughing. I had this problem with Publisher’s Clearing House. The worst was I ended up with magazine subscriptions I didn’t want. But truly, Jelly, you are amazeballs.

  6. I get these sort of things all the time, I’m sure that they just want me to feel special or that they REALLY love me. Sadly, they achieve neither of these goals.

  8. It’s okay. I gave in and… I’m okay now. I mean, at first it was an adjustment, but their deals really are amazeballs. You just have to embrace the truth—you’ve always wanted uniquely stitched garments that fit one side of your body perfectly, and who doesn’t love a good chainsaw adventure? Boring people, that’s who.

  9. Hahaha. I’ve been there!
    Now we’re going to call you Jemmy.
    🙂

    (It’s Jelly. I MEAN JENNY. ARGH. ~ Jenny)

  10. More seriously, you might want to let the State’s Attorney General know. Or the Better Business Bureau. Or the bad email Vigilante Squad. Cynthia.

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  12. This is what Yahoo mail is for. I made an email that I never use for anything other than “this we website requires you give us your email address” garbage. I send the fetchers there and keep my real email to myself.

  13. Yes, this does happen in real life. Sometimes filters work, but if you ever try to unsubscribe the will know you are a real person and never let you go. Stalker? At least they can be arrested.

  14. Oh jeez. I actually dealt with something similar a few months ago. It was ridiculous how hard it was to disconnect from them. I eventually just started flagging them as spam.

  15. Congratulations! Please expect a flood of new spam messages now that they know your address is valid! (None of them will be from me, though.)

    P.S. Is it considered “stalking” if I just read all your tweets, blog posts and books, and come to your book readings? If so, then I am stalking you. Sorry.

  16. Well that’s horrible, but all I can think is ‘Jelly’ is kind of a cool name…

  17. Laughing out loud at work reading this. I especially love those that make you log into an account you didn’t even know you had to unsubscribe!

  18. I’ve noticed that every time I successfully manage to unsubscribe from one of these insane sites, they somehow sneakily sign me up for a couple new ones. It’s infuriating!

  19. More proof that the Matrix is real and we’re living in a simulation. Specifically Sims 3.

  20. I am all the way dead right now. HA! Jelly, this was a fucking hilarious post! Thanks for attempting to unsubscribe from that which you hadn’t signed up for…totally made my day!!

  21. Jenny, you need to sign up at unrollme.com. Once a day it puts all of the emails that look like spam in a queue, and you can easily click on the ones you don’t want anymore. It will then filter them out of your email automatically. I get about 10-15 junk emails per day, and I don’t have to deal with them anymore because of this. It is legit. -May you be blessed with many llamas-

  23. At work other day I clicked on the harp mortgage thingy and before I was done quicken loans called and since then I have been bombarded with 7 different mortgage companies who will not take no for an answer, they call every half hour despite attempts to block them. I don’t know what fresh hell this is but being technolically dopey I deserved this and those you jemmy/ jelly are going thru. Plus someone signed me up for the dildos of the month club and they don’t take returns 🙁

  26. Sorry to hear that Jelly. Was this Trump’s website? I have never successfully managed to unsubscribe to that. It just goes to spam now.

  28. Thank you for that, Jenny. I just took a Cell Biology midterm this morning, so it was awesome to be able to laugh when I’m so very tired and brain-dead. Thanks again! =)
    -Jennie

  29. I too have gone down that “Unsubscribe” rabbit hole before – it’s awful, and frustrating, and raised my blood pressure to amazing new heights. But since I didn’t have a heart attack, I guess I should consider it a “win”. Yay me?

  30. I went back and forth with each exchange, going between “Oh, she’s making it up, I get it now” and then “No, wait, she’s not making it up, I’ve seen that before.”

    My email address is just [my first name]@gmail.com. Every person with any name even remotely CLOSE to my first name who is offered a 10% discount on today’s purchase for signing up to a newsletter, or asked for an email contact by the car salesman or the salon or the political campaign or the guy at the bar that they don’t want to actually be bothered by, or forgets momentarily that their own email address is [my first name]123@gmail.com, or whose mother/cousin/neighbor/boss/BFF forgets about the 123 – they ALL use [my first name] @gmail.com. I have (switches tabs to check) 1902 unread messages in my inbox right now, and virtually all of them are for these people. I’ve given up trying to unsubscribe to the business ones. I’ll let the moms and cousins and bosses know that they’ve got the wrong email address, and just filter the rest to spam.

    Remember when getting an email was so exciting? sigh

  31. I feel like this is a Black Mirror Episode and you are secretly powering an AI that will take over the internet by learning from your responses.

  33. Except for the exclusive offers, this sounds like LinkedIn. You can never leave… Wasn’t this a Twilight Zone episode? Wait TZ predates LinkedIn. Black Mirror? I see no hyperbole in this post.

  34. Sounds like trying to leave Facebook… with the addition of sad kitten photos and your disapproving Aunt Sadie begging you to stay via emails.

  35. This is why you create a separate aliased email for every list subscription. If they won’t take “FOAD” for an answer, you just delete that alias and forget it ever existed. They’ll continue to send, it’ll continue to bounce, and it’s no longer your problem. It’s THEIRS.

  37. Hahahahahaha! I bought toe socks online once and I got TWO LEFT SOCKS in the mail. When I contacted them for a correction they informed me I did NOT get two left socks because that is NOT how they do business. But, they added me to 8,000 email bots just in case I wanted to learn of other great toesock deals. Sigh. I feel your pain. I no longer unsubscribe. That just tells them they got a human…

  39. nformation are on the dark web. Sure enough Experian did find my email address on the dark web because of my patreon account. I loathe those people who have sold my email list.

  40. i’ve been trying to get linkedin to fuck off and leave me alone forever now, and every time i unsubscribe, i end up with three times more emails than before. and i have no idea what my login details are, because i’ve never used it apart from the day i (stupidly) signed up years ago, so i can’t even get in to delete my page without inviting more emails. gmail won’t let me mark them as spam. i despair

  42. The Internet is just one giant terrorist organization that lures you in with precious animal videos and clever memes involving the F word and then all of a sudden you are hammered with Cialis and reverse mortgage ads.

  45. Never click unsubscribe if you didn’t actually subscribe. Mark as spam and let your ISP deal with it (assuming you use an ISP that supports that. If you don’t, change ISPs).

  46. 5 out of 10 psychiatrists say I’m harmless. I just like sending you personal emails rather than answer in blog. Brouhaha! Tomorrow’s Friday the 13th. And while nothing is crazier than Saturday the 14th, nothing is more psychotic than Thursday the 12th. I mean – apparently, right?

  49. Exactly why I don’t e-mail, I am still scared of messenger, and do not know how to cut, paste, wave (wth)…let hubbie be your e-mail opener?

  51. You ARE being stalked…by me! Mwuahahahaaaaa! That last bit was meant to sound like The Count’s laugh on Sesame Street, but when written kinda also looks like the kissing noise old, rich, white ladies from New York make, which somehow makes it even creepier. Sorry about that, Jelly. Love, your bestie, Me.

  52. This is, surprisingly exactly what the New York Times did to me-I had to speak to a live person to unsubscribe and they had me on hold for 12 minutes then kept asking me to validate information I never provided when I signed up.

  53. I try ONE time, then I click “Mark as Spam” any more emails I find emails for the higher ups in the company and forward the messages to them (you can even set up a “rule” in your email program to do this!)
    I think I have ridden this same merry-go-round. And I assure you, I never buy from them again.

  54. Jemmy, it’s amazing how funny I found this being I have been through some of it. So freaking funny.

  56. Who is Jemmy? Mine is the wine company that sends me about 3 a day letting me know they are saving my bottles of Kendall-Jackson wine. I’m really glad because I also got an email from the winery. They burned up in the fires. So mine should be safe according to Maria.

  57. Omg, I just started getting emails from some random website. Multiple times a day. Grr…click unsubscribe. Goes to site where it asks for email. Enter email and hit unsubscribe. “You do not have an account, to update email settings, please make an account.” Excuse me?!? I wound up using my spam blocker.

  58. This happens A LOT so I have changed my response. Now I just set up macros to move any unwanted mail to the junk/spam folder.

  60. Curiosity prompted me to Google “amazeballs” and apparently it is a thing. Huh. And I thought English was my first language. (I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to tell my husband about this adjective or not.)

  62. This would make a great episode of Black Mirror. Also, Kraft Kitchens is just ignoring my unsubscribe requests in a definitively passive-aggressive way, and have upped their game to 4 emails a day. No, Kraft, I am NOT cooking using salad dressing as a sauce base.

  63. Whatever you do… DON’T ever ever try to unsubscribe from AARP. My dearly-departed MIL used our address as her mailing address for the couple years of her life. I notified them shortly after she passed in January and they said it would take a few weeks for her name to be purged from their mailings.

    Nine months later, despite NUMEROUS attempts to curb the flow, we still receive almost daily offers from AARP and all the companies they partner with to part seniors from their hard-earned retirement income. Particularly annoying are the funeral insurance and reverse mortgage offers (on MY house, not hers!?!?!). I’m thinking about marking this crap with pithy return to sender messages like “YOU’RE TOO LATE!” or “SHE’S DEAD, JIM” or forwarding it to the address of the cemetery.

  64. I live in pa but somehow get job offers for same named place in England 12x a day , all perfect for me except I don’t know what they have on me to be perfect and no way to get out of these according to them amazing job opportunities and no way to unsuscribe.bloody brilliant lol. No phone number to call and blocking impossible but today learned from various commenter’s that I can spam their ass. Thank you, thank you

  65. Fittingly enough, these are called triggered emails at my company. These are particularly triggery. Hope you escape!

  66. That kind of reminds me of the time I called our cable provider for technical help because the DVR had messed up for the millionth time. The girl tried to upsell me by asking if I wanted to hear their specials for home security systems. I was like, “I can’t trust you with 40 episodes of Criminal Minds. Why would I trust you with my home’s security?” Her response was, “I can’t argue with that logic.” We ended up cutting the cable cord. LOL. Hope your email “stalker” goes away!

  67. Oh Jemmy, it’s scary how accurate that is. I tried I one time a while back and finally decided to just mark everything I don’t like as spam and let it go to the spam folder, never to be seen again. Seems easier. I also have a thing about not answering phone calls from numbers I don’t recognize. I was recently chastised by a man for not just answering and saying “take me off your list” because obviously these people will listen and are fine upstanding citizens and will never call again. So he did that and then became perturbed when they called again three more times that day. And the next day. Gee…you mean that didn’t work as well as my ignoring them? Hmmm….

  68. This is why I love gmail, 95% of those kinds of emails are automatically filtered out, or at least filtered into the “promotions” tab, which I just completely ignore. Where you went wrong was clicking “unsubscribe”, because now they know you saw the email, so they’ll keep sending them. “Unsubscribe” frequently doesn’t let you actually unsubscribe, and it just leads to frustration.

  69. Just report as spam, and make sure it goes to the spam folder in future so you can re-report them.
    I belong to a board where we post the ‘sender’ name, broken email address (as dumbo @ spamnet.com) and subject line, with snark. Sometimes we’ll open one and critique it for extra relief of snark.

  70. Nightmare! Iuse an email programme called Mail Washer that lets me bounce and delete emails from the server. Most satisfying when you bounce back to these ones with ‘invalid address’. But holy hell, why is it even OK that these places think you would bother to buy from them when they just spam Jelly all over the place?

  71. I can’t stop laughing! I feel your pain though and I’ve often found myself in the same kind of hell in an automated phone system.

  72. Who did you piss off because this is the perfect way to get even with someone. In fact I’m going to do this to my father. What would be the worst daily deals I can offer? Thanks Jelly I just found a new life passion. Jelly for the win 😁

  73. Sometime, try removing your “interests” from Facebook settings. It’s futile and what’s worse, they choose stuff you’re not even into!

  74. Omg I love this, it has happened to me hundreds of times and I’ve given up. Then I started adding these ‘newsletters’ to my spam folder but they keep re-appearing. I don’t know what to do. I probably should get a new email adress.

  76. I read you should just click the get-thy-to-spam button(not sure if that is on PCs too or just Apple) instead of clicking unsubscribe. Good luck!

  77. Hilarious. I had one a while ago which I needed my account for to unsubscribe. I never subscribed so I don’t know what my account information is.

  78. OMG this is like getting signed up for Cat Facts. Are you sure someone didn’t do this to elaborately prank you?

  79. Oh Jelly, I love how you make me laugh. I’ve somehow managed to invert the colors of all my apps in an effort to save battery life on my phone, but that’s a whole different subject. Jemmy, I not only get spammed, I get double spammed because I have more than one email account, and I use Outlook as my mail program. I don’t know why they feel the need to send me two of the same email. Being technologically idiotic, I’m sure it’s something I did when I set up the program. Right now, I do an email nuke every other day. Select all, tap trash icon. To be fair, I scroll down the list first and unchecked the few emails I actually want to read, like yours Jemima. But I feel your pain. I’m just too lazy to click unsubscribe.

  81. You should see the creepy emails and fliers in the mail that Sprint stalks me with. “Come back! We miss you! We love you! Please! Our dick is bigger! We promise!”

  82. This reminds me of how I had to report myself as an imposter on MySpace, in order to get RID of my MySpace account – which, by the way, there were TWO profiles with my name, using the same email. I’m still confused as to how this happened, especially since I created ANOTHER account, using the same damn email to report myself…………

  83. Jeez, and I thought trying to unsubscribe from Yummly was obnoxious. This is insane! Also, I feel like some sort of reference to “I don’t think you’re ready for THIS jelly” should be made but I can’t think of one.

  87. Argh! Never Click Unsub on these things! It just lets them resell your info as a live email.
    Update your Rules in Mail Preferences instead. Create a Rule for Sender is not in my Contacts and they go immediately to a folder I made titled Not in Contacts, where at my pleasure and not before, they are skimmed, the wanted ones pulled out, and the rest I hold down the Option key whilst I click Delete.
    It helps to shout “Begone, thou spam! Thou fetid canker’d-throated deceiver, thou swilling mir’d swamp-life that never nursed a bosom!”
    Also I like build-your-own Shakespearean curses.

  88. #10 CreatingTheRoad is so right. le quote:
    To report a suspicious email, forward the message to Apple with complete header information. To forward the email: In macOS Mail, select the email and choose Forward As Attachment from the Message menu at the top of your computer screen.
    These email addresses are monitored by Apple, but you might not receive a reply to your report.
    If you receive what you believe to be a phishing email that’s designed to look like it’s from Apple, please send it to reportphishing@apple.com.
    To report spam or other suspicious emails that you receive in your iCloud.com, me.com, or mac.com Inbox, please send them to abuse@icloud.com.
    To report spam or other suspicious messages that you receive through iMessage, tap Report Junk under the message, or take a screenshot on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac and send it to imessage.spam@apple.com.
    If you receive a suspicious message about your purchase activity in the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBooks Store, contact iTunes Support.” quote from https://support.apple.com/itunes
    —– also, FTC is uce.gov

  91. I had a date like that once. After a year of making excuses so that I wouldn’t have to ever see him again, I finally said “Howard, I don’t like you. “He said “We can work through that.” I told him he was like an Amway salesman. It’s actually a long and funny story, and worth the horrible evening I spent with him.

  92. Oh Jimmy,
    my prev. phone company would mail and call me weekly to interest me in special deals – not amazeballs. Then I received something that said I could go to their website and request they stop contacting me. Dare I hope? Their site only appeared to be poorly built, but after 20 minutes of circling through the same useless pages, dead ends, links that took me to the wrong page – on my lunch break because I didn’t have a computer back then – it dawns on me it’s doing exactly what it was supposed to. I wasn’t giving up (silly me), so I sent them a message through their sites contact page – simple words, short sentences, no ambivalent language. Weeks later I received a reply, sorry to hear I would prefer to not receive more their amazing offers, but sadly they said they would stop. That worked for about a year. When I finally got a cell and dropped my landline, I was so glad to cancel my account. Many years and several corporate name changes later, they’re now my ISP – the irony is not lost on me. They’re trying harder now to be nice ’cause they’re not the only game in town.
    Now I get robocalls on my cell – travel agencies, vacation resorts, credit cards, etc. (Hint: if you ever answer these calls with Hola!, you start getting VMs in Spanish.)
    But being harassed and toyed with by bots that mangle your name? No reason for that, just evil.
    A suggestion: pull up their email, hit reply, hold a mirror up to the monitor and type Bloody Mary three times, then send them a shot of the mirror image. Cause your still a good person and you want them to know what’s coming for them, right? Unless, of course, your being spammed through one of the Seven Portals of Hell, then you might be screwed.
    Tom

  93. oh lord, yes. when I find one of those now i put it in the junk folder with “block address” and there it stays until I delete the damn thing forever. And no those unsubscribe buttons are the equivalent of the dentists of my youth who, as you were screaming in agony would say, ‘almost over now…onnnnnnnne moooooorrreeee minutteeeee….” yeah, right. They don’t mean it either.

  94. Doubt you’ll get this far in the comments, you’re only 1 person, but if you do – I happen to work in IT and I’m learning a lot about cyber security lately.
    Unless you specifically remember signing up for the email notifications, Never do unsubscribe!
    2 reasons
    1 less nefarious, it confirms your email address belongs to a real & active person & many spammed will sell it so unsubscribe can lead to More spam
    2 more nefarious, some bad people out there actually make their unsubscribe link lead to websites with viruses & malware!
    Here’s an article if you’re interested with more imfo about this
    http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/lisa-parker-target-5-spam-i-am-149181805.html

    Be safe out there Jenny & anyone else who happens to read this, the internet is the frigging wild west!

  95. The first thing I thought of was “Welcome to the Hotel California” too, but a number of people beat me to it, including Kelley on the very first comment. I’ve had this same experience unsubscribing at least once. I did like Amy in comment 12 and made an email for junk mail, but I keep forgetting to use it (dammit!).

    Hotel California dates us, doesn’t it?

  96. Clicking “unsubscribe” is a scam that tells them they reached an active account and they sell that information to other spammers.

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  99. That there is some Blackhat UX. I hate that unsubscibe buttons can’t be trusted, but I find filtering or blocking domains to be easier. I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to legit unsubscibe from Netflix marketing emails to be told it’d happen in 7 days and it just doesn’t work.

  102. And, finally:
    You’re name has been removed from our list.
    This should take effect in 7 -11 business days.

    WTF? Nothing takes that long. Does the request go by pony?

  104. OMG, I have had this same experience trying to get out of websites. Now I just report them to SpamCop. Laughed so hard I nearly spit up, you totally nailed this.

  105. My favorite is after you unsubscribe they ask for feedback and one of the choices is, i no longer wish to receive these emails. Well, obviously. 😳

  107. A Swedish company sends me at least 1 email a day and I can’t un subscribe because I can’t read the language. At this moment I don’t know anyone who reads Swedish!

  109. Never click “unsubscribe” on those things. It just confirms that it’s a valid email. Block the email address instead, or create an inbox rule to divert them to spam.

  110. This happens to me all the time. I get signed up for all sorts of crap. I love being able to click “I never signed up for this list” but I doubt they actually care.

  111. If they put too many walls in my way when I try to unsubscribe, I just make a custom filter in my email settings to route all of their emails directly to the trash.

  112. I applaud you for not throwing either computer or cellphone out a window or giving it a solid boot, because after the second email that would have been my response. Way to have self control even if the damn website doesn’t deserve it.

  115. RE: LinkedIn
    After being annoyed with their emails and no real way to unsubscribe, I wrote them requesting that they delete my account and a real person wrote back saying they would. And they have!!!
    Amazeballs!

  117. I think after the first “This must be a mistake”- would be like ‘I’ll just get spam from you for all of eternity.’

  118. It always feels like a long shot, but you can report spam to spam@uce.gov. I was getting a ton of messages from “mortgage adjustment companies” and “home sales specialists” (because I live in a hot market and once shopped for a mortgage, so I probably ended up on the list of “owns a home that’s probably worth a lot more than they paid for it”). I got so sick of it (I was getting 4 or 5 messages a day), I replied to each and CC’ed the above address. The emails stopped immediately. I figured it wouldn’t do anything (these were clearly scams, that came from a slightly different address every time and had subjects like “follow up on your home inquiry” and “we’ve reviewed your application”), but it worked! Since they already know you’re a real person, might be worth a try.

  120. Hello Jed Knee,

    So funny because it is SO true! Thank you for the laughter.
    I learned a lot from the comments, though, I’ve been trustingly clicking unsubscribe and wondering why I never make progress paring my inbox down! I hate sneaky schemes.

  121. And My comment us tagged by some kind of bizarre trackback link. What the heck?

  124. Reading the other commenters here- there are so many sweet people who don’t think about security all day as I do. I just want to share info to help.
    There are other reasons you don’t want to click any links in their email, or to reply. Not only does the action let the spammer know that yours is a “live” email that is valuable for them to list and sell. Your computer’s physical location, your IP address, your service provider, and the time you replyed is information in the structure of every email, that you have just given to some stranger. Other entities want to use your computer’s bandwidth to send spam, and worse things.
    Good news- many internet service providers are now offering free security software- maybe yours is one.
    Lots of great sites online to learn more- please have a look!

  125. Sorry to hear about your problem Jetty. I have loads of crap I can send you on a daily basis if you like Jeppy? Just let me know and I’d be happy to annoy you with shit you don’t need. Now, take good care of yourself Jessy; I’m waiting to hear from you.

  126. You should change your password, since they were able to post on your Facebook account.

  127. I once had to click unsubscribe to an email string from a hotel that wants me to stay there. What about me, a zookeeper, indicates I am a wealthy globe-trotter? And why do I want discounts and updates twice a day? So I went to the unsubscribe page. It required me to log ON WITH A PASSWORD.

    I went to my email filters and had their stuff sent to spam. Sometimes marking an email as spam can shut down their system for a few hours. If they’re going to inconvenience me, I shall return the favor.

  128. This story sounds about right. I’ve been advised to not click “unsubscribe” because that just confirms that you are a “real” person who actually reads your emails and takes action based on the emails you receive. Then, when you do click unsubscribe, they still somehow find ways to not truly let you go. Hopefully your matter will soon be resolved and finalized…with a confirmation that you truly want to unsubscribe.

  129. When someone pisses me off I sign them up for spam email from porn sites. I used to send them an subscription to dildo of the month club (before the Internet was a thing) but my go to company went out of business. I did not do this to you but I sure would love the website 🙂

  131. So true! And how about those sites that offer stuff for “free” – just enter your credit card number. Then we’ll charge a whole bunch of shitty stuff to your card and send you crap you never ordered and would never want. Then when you try to cancel it, we’ll make it really hard for you to contact us. We’ll send you emails similar to the ones outlined in your blog post above, or direct you to a number that is constantly telling you that “call frequency is higher than usual; please be patient or call back at another time.” Finally, you call the credit card company and report your card lost/stolen. Then they send emails reminding you to update your credit card information so they can charge you for more useless crap you never wanted in the first place. Ugh! Scammers everywhere!

  134. These emails are really confusing. I don’t usually go through them and delete them directly, so I hope you can find a better solution.

  135. I would literally hand back every single bit of technology from the last twenty years in exchange for a world without email. And passwords. And kooky automated messages from corporations who pretend they’re your friend!

  137. My solution – I have THREE spam filters. Yes, three. If you manage to fool all three with your “exclusive deals!” then you are a very special mailbot and I’ll grant you the 5 seconds it takes to read and manually delete your email. And write a new filter to make sure you never get through again. Good times.

  138. Never unsubscribe from a scam site, just mark it as junk or spam and get on with your life.

  139. Try unroll me. They automatically scan your email for stuff like that then you go through a checklist and check the ones you want to unsubscribe from.

  143. I realize that I probably gave my advice a little too flippantly given Anon’s comment. That email was coming to my already “junk” email (a totally separate address on a web-based provider that isn’t linked to anything (I even changed my “verification/backup” email to a fake email after setting it up)), but I also use a VPN with IP spoofing to access it. Plus my home network has a strong password and operates on a whitelist (only devices I specifically allow (by MAC) can access it, on top of needing the password) on a 5Ghz band (shorter signal length, so you can’t access it from outside my home, anyway).

    So, sure, they may be trying to use the header info to run spam through my network, but they’re going to have a pretty rough time doing so. If you have poor internet security (including relying on basic software, especially if free, even from your ISP), don’t reply or click links. And everyone should set up a junk account on something like Yahoo or Hotmail that you use when you have to give your email for something that isn’t very official business or people you actually know.

  144. This is worse than the vampires… but it would amazing to sign up someone you hate for a mailing list like this.

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