Is this familiar to you: Viagra now, free games + win cash, \/lagra works excellently for your problem; People are winning Big every day.; Start Winning Now!!; Overwhelmingly important information.
We all see it and we all have tasted the ugly part of the web that is spam. Spam email, sms, telemarketers or just getting hassled walking down the street. Why do they do it, when they know we hate it? Because it works. Send out enough at such a small cost and the chances are someone will bite.
Well I have a few tips that can at least stop those annoying emails and marketing calls.
Whilst SMS spam is not as prevalent yet as email, just be careful when replying to messages you are unsure of. It can cost you a few dollars. Just delete them. If it happens a lot, contact your carrier.
Some tips:
Get more email addresses.
Filters
Apart from tweaking your mail client junk mail filters. The later versions of Outlook are pretty good. If you still have the settings set to high and still getting grief. There are a number of anti-spam and anti-phishing programs you can use. I normally just use the Outlook Junk Mail Filter set on High and adhere to the rest of the points here and get bothered very little, if at all with Spam.
Keep the email safe
Don’t go blindingly adding your email to websites when you buy things or enter competitions. Set up a yahoo, hotmail or gmail accounts for that.
If setting up an email account for your work. Eg: myname@mycompany.com.au; try and choose a name that is hard to guess. Spammers use programs to guess email names and then add your domain on the end of it and send mail. They can even check whether the email was received or whether it bounced. These programs will usually guess first name, general names eg: info, accounts, accounting, orders, sales and so on. Try and use difficult to guess names like: mycompany_accounts@mycompany.com.au or myname.surname@mycompany.com.au
Some people use graphics with links to email. Sorry, the spam bots can still read the code. Plus how ugly does that look on a site the text looks different to the rest of the copy. It really looks like amateur hour.
Spam bots
These nifty little buggers (Spam Bots) scan the net for new websites, follow links and read code and locate email addresses. MerlinFX encrypts all email names so whilst a human can read an email, the spam bots cannot read the encrypted code and move on. If you do not use MerlinFX services, insist on having your email encrypted.
Whilst this is not about spam, it’s equally annoying. Well here is a way that is fun and will get you removed from the lists. Now I know someone is trying to make a living here, but my time is precious and rather than hanging up and being rude, turn the tables.
Ask them for their credit card details and/or their accounts dept. When they ask why, advise them that even though they intend to send someone over to make more money for you or streamline your business or whatever; advise them that your time is precious and you charge by the hour. The rate is $xyz (make it $100 for arguments sake) and say it is charged at minimum 2 hours.
This happened a few weeks ago. First I hang up. They ring back a week later. Second time I said this:
Daniel: ‘what’s your credit card details?’
Caller: ‘why do you want that?’
Daniel: ‘If it’s such a great service, you won’t mind me charging you for my time.’
Caller: ‘No, wait, what!, but it’s free!.’
Daniel: ‘I don’t care. My time is precious. I only have a certain amount of it and I intend to bill you for it.’
They have not called back. :)
I have a friend working on an anti-telemarketing device. That’s one of its features. I will keep you informed as new developments happen with this.
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