I’m curious what people would think about someone (talking about me) simply not having an email address in this day and age…
I’m not talking about pretending to not have an email address, but ACTUALLY not having one. Like if you sent me email at my old address it would bounce back with an “unknown user” error.
I get literally thousands of emails per day (mostly spam slipping through the spam filters), of which 3 or 4 actually require some sort of response. The 2,000+ other emails each day become so overwhelming that I check my email once per week these days (it would get to my eyes faster if you snail mail me a hand-written letter), and even when I do check it, 99.99% spam means as I’m clearing it out, inevitably I may throw out some non-spam if it’s not immediately recognizable. So I’m starting to think… so I really need email? All my friends have my instant message ID, and they all know about my email situation, so really… do I need email anymore?
I struck this one recently – 3 members of a sports club committee don’t have email. One doesn’t even have a landline. Everything is on her cellphone – and she has about 8 people (including kids) in her house. I guess you always know who the call is for if everyone has their own cell…
It made communication quite interesting, should I print and post every email I send?
As for the spam, even the major ISPs down here admit to losing the battle.
Leave your email on the blog and then everyone can email you with their answer. 8)
Interesting concept – I’ve debated changing my Email address because of the deluge, but heck, it’s *my* name (like you) … so it seems ridiculous to give that up …
and get a dial up phone and write letters lol… we all need to slow down anyway 🙂
http://spamarrest.com
The downfall is it’s a whitelist. It only lets through approved email addresses. Users not on the list need to enter a security code. It stops all your spam, but it also stops the idiots that email you and aren’t in your list. Which is fine 99.999% of the time. You can then go through their site to search through the email they’ve blocked.
I started using it when I got to the point you are at. Now I get all the emails I want and 0 spam. I only occasionally miss emails from people who have never emailed me before. And guess what? Since I didnt know they sent them anyways I’m not really missing them! Ha. Plus I probably don’t care anyways. Unless it’s some old girlfriend writing to tell me she had a boob job and wants to get it on. Hell, even then… if you aint in my white list. I freaking probably don’t care. Even if you did have a boob job.
Should mention that spamarrest is a web based service. You tell it how to get it your email via POP and it gets it and cleans it. You then point your email client to it and get your cleaned email from it. No software to install and it works with your current email reader and ISP.
We even have a barracuda spam fireall at work, but I still like this better. My mail goes through both I think actually.
Woo! I haven’t seen a spam in years! Woo!!!! Eat that one!
I have been getting lots of emails back that were undeliverable and it seems someone is using my domain name and then just tacking gibberish to the front before the @ and sending out emails, how would I stop that?
“Unless it’s some old girlfriend writing to tell me she had a boob job and wants to get it on. Hell, even then… if you aint in my white list. I freaking probably don’t care.”
Feel free to forward your emails to me if you don’t want them… 😀
Seriously though, I can understand the frustration. I feel the same way about our regular phone service here, constant calls for the kids (well, not so bad now that school is on but during the summer…grr) and they’re NEVER here. I could seriously live without having a normal phone. We’ve got two cell phones in case anyone DFO’s and we need to call 911 or something.
99% of my email is either crap or outright spam. I have about 6 addresses now that I pretty much ignore and have a good look through every few days unless I’m expecting something. Which of course, means I end up wading through 6 boxes of shit anyways, because I don’t remember what address I’m waiting for a message in…
Hey Shawn, I use GMail (like you) and don’t really have a huge problem. However I saw an autoresponder the other day used in an interesting way.
I sent an email and the responder came back and basically said “Hey, if you want to have this email reach me, go to this following web address and take this action” the bots aren’t smart enough to do this. After doing the action your email gets whitelisted.
If you want I’ll share the person’s email address but don’t want to post it publicly.
Maybe not such a bad idea to give up the ghost. You may have seen this (and corresponding articles) over the past few months, stating that e-mail is for ‘old people’ anyway. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061002-7877.html
I don’t see the big issue. Greylisting is so effective, it eliminates like 99.9999999% of spam with 0% false positives. Even without greylisting, SpamAssassin is effective enough to get like 99% of spam with a few slipping through.
SpamAssassin takes a lot of hands on work. It is good for an individual or the computer savy…but it is tough in a corp environment because someone needs to man the helm all day long adding “ok” email address’s to the list.
I say ditch the email address and leave your cell number in your signature…if it’s important enough, they’ll call 🙂
monks: I’ve never added anyone to a SpamAssassin whitelist and I’ve run it in several corporate environments. Maybe you meant Spam Arrest?
The 2,000+ emails per day I get are the ones that slip THOUGH SpamAssassin and another spam filter I’m using. It’s It’s more like 100,000/day if you count emails automatically filtered to spam.
http://www.greylisting.org/
I’m confused Shawn, why would anyone want to talk to you? 🙂
That’s what I want to know… 🙂
So no more Random Email posts? Sniff.
so, you have no email and you require an email address to publish a comment on your site? 😉
Well, I understand you… I have had the same email address for 9 years. I receives about 1000 spams a day… it became unmanageable all for a couple real emails a week. I don’t even read it anymore.
Now everyone knows, my friends, to call me, or best to text message me. For me, text messages have replaced email mostly.
Now I would hate being spammed with text messages!!! Not because of the cost, I have unlimited, but because of waking me up in the middle of the night.
For a while I thought about implementing a spam filter requiring for EACH email sent to me, a confirmation sent to the user, and a weblink to click, with a captcha. Real users will understand and click. I know it is annoying, but worth it.
Something else to consider?
Hmm, maybe this has something to do with me having about 20 different emails. 🙁