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I had a similar situation occur after taking the GRE exam, after which they ask whether they can share your contact info with interested schools. Of course this

I had a similar situation occur after taking the GRE exam, after which they ask whether they can share your contact info with interested schools. Of course this sounded like a great idea when I was still deciding where to apply, but it turned into a major annoyance when I'm still receiving spam from these backwoods colleges more than a year after accepting an offer. And like the article, there's no global unsubscribe; I have to unsub from each school's list individually. Moral of the story -- be careful because you can't unspill the milk.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago
Use a different email address just for the particular promotion then dump it at the end.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jmomo 12y ago
  Normal users don't have the ability to give themselves an unlimited number of email aliases. You need to own your own server/domain to do that. Gmail has a nice feature, but it doesn't obscure your real email address and it is trivial to strip away the extra tag. The issue here I think is that the average mail user needs some kind of filtering language to control their own inboxes. There is no standardized way to do this, which is a shame. I would really like for their to be a standardized server-side mail filtering language for mail services, where you can take your rule set from one mail server to another. Personally, I have my own mail server and it has it's own mail filter system and language, but I am not always on the command line with my mail client to modify those filters. Outlook, Thunderturd/Seamonkey, and other clients have some client-side rules, but those rules don't work if my desktop is offline I am reading those messages on my phone. I hope in the future well-regarding developers who don't have a private interest will take a look at email again and make the improvements needed to continue to support this standard communication format. Egos and private-self interest is not what made the internet great, but there is little shortage of it these days amongst us. Where will the Tim Berners-Lees, Richard Stallmans, John Postels of the future come from? These people didn't get rich. We did.
  - ggchappell 12y ago
    > Normal users don't have the ability to give themselves an unlimited number of email aliases. I don't agree. No one said it had to be on the same domain as ones regular address. Sign up for a new account with Gmail or Yahoo or any of the others. Use that address when filling out a "please spam me" form. Check it for a while. Then forget it when its usefulness ends.
Houshalter 12y ago
I think these types of emails would be fairly easy for a spam filter to catch. They likely use many of the same words.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

Use a different email address just for the particular promotion then dump it at the end.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jmomo 12y ago
Normal users don't have the ability to give themselves an unlimited number of email aliases. You need to own your own server/domain to do that. Gmail has a nice feature, but it doesn't obscure your real email address and it is trivial to strip away the extra tag. The issue here I think is that the average mail user needs some kind of filtering language to control their own inboxes. There is no standardized way to do this, which is a shame. I would really like for their to be a standardized server-side mail filtering language for mail services, where you can take your rule set from one mail server to another. Personally, I have my own mail server and it has it's own mail filter system and language, but I am not always on the command line with my mail client to modify those filters. Outlook, Thunderturd/Seamonkey, and other clients have some client-side rules, but those rules don't work if my desktop is offline I am reading those messages on my phone. I hope in the future well-regarding developers who don't have a private interest will take a look at email again and make the improvements needed to continue to support this standard communication format. Egos and private-self interest is not what made the internet great, but there is little shortage of it these days amongst us. Where will the Tim Berners-Lees, Richard Stallmans, John Postels of the future come from? These people didn't get rich. We did.
- ggchappell 12y ago
  > Normal users don't have the ability to give themselves an unlimited number of email aliases. I don't agree. No one said it had to be on the same domain as ones regular address. Sign up for a new account with Gmail or Yahoo or any of the others. Use that address when filling out a "please spam me" form. Check it for a while. Then forget it when its usefulness ends.

Houshalter 12y ago

I think these types of emails would be fairly easy for a spam filter to catch. They likely use many of the same words.