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Why Junk E-Mail is Evil
Just Say No
I don't like junk mail and I hope you don't, either. Please don't send any, and whatever you do, don't encourage others to send more.
It's annoying. It's a waste of my time. It uses up Internet bandwidth. It costs me money to receive it. It bugs me.
"May I Speak With Mr. Christopher Page?"
Don't get me wrong, there's a place for commerce on the Internet. But, let's face it, junk e-mail is an intrusion, just like a sales phone call (hmm, maybe I'll write one called Why Junk Phone Calls are Evil). Someone is invading your space (at your cost, if you pay for e-mail service like I do) for the sole purpose of taking money from you. That's just plain rude.
How You Can Help for Pennies a Day
I'm not one for legislation and bureaucracy, so please, let's not attempt to regulate this stuff. Instead, take personal action:
- Reply to junk messages and tell the senders that you don't want their junk. Don't be too rude, and whatever you do don't reply to all recipients of a message -- they don't want your junk either.
- Forward junk mail to the "postmaster" of the sender's domain with a message stating that you don't want to receive these messages. Usually, the address is "postmaster@domain", where "domain" is that part of the sender's address that appears to the right of the ampersand '@'.
- Whatever you do don't respond to their solicitations! Don't buy their products, don't subscribe to their services, and don't go to their web page and increase their hit-count (which may be used to sell advertising to clients). Somebody must be buying their stuff or they wouldn't bother advertising.