Email peeves

Spamming is definitely at the top of this list. But my mail filter at my domain is working so well that only 3 or 4 sneak through in a week. I also follow these rules:

• I don't give out my email address unless I have to
• I don't reply to suspicious email
• I use a bogus address on "email required" fields or use a disposable email address from sneakemail, spamex or spamgourmet. (They used to be free but no more it seems)
• make good use of dsbl.org, ordb.org and spamcop.net open relay lists.

I find forwarded jokes annoying and consider it a phenomenon - why is forwarding someone a joke better than leaving 'em alone when you have nothing to say? I am yet to come across a joke that was invented by the sender! People who forward jokes to me often forward them to hundreds of recipients at a time with the multiple levels of quotation and the messed up paragraphs and all. If they consider themselves more savvy, bcc them to hundreds of recipients, so you get a "undisclosed list of recipients". Both are equally annoying, and my mail filter is set to bounce all Bcc. I haven't after 6 months, missed anything legit that was sent to me by bcc! If you must send an announcement or an email to multiple parties, learn to mail merge! If you are on the mac, you have these options:

• Intellimerge talks to your ISP's smtp server, and sends email to a list of users using simple variables or conditional ones. Using the OSX smtp server, you can talk to the recipient's server direct, thus getting immediate feedback of the delivery (not tested)
• eMerge demo works for a short list (20?) of recipients. It talks to the recipients mail server instead of your ISP's. No bounced message to your mailbox if the delivery fails! Costs a hefty US$99 though
• Maxbulk Mailer and Email Merge are similar tools with less features. I find Email Merge interface hard to use...

I am getting an increasing amount of HTML mail, mostly from newbies. I suspect it has to do with their preconfigured computers. If you are reading this, please don't send me HTML mail! It is about as rude as forcing vegetarians to swallow meat. If you must send formatted text, send me properly layouted PDF attachments instead!


The trend has stopped thank goodness, but I used to get a vcard attachment with every message from an associate. This is analogous to giving everyone you talk to your business card each and every time you talk with them... A suspected Netscape thing. Very annoying.