Nobody gets between my son

and his Cocoa Pebbles!

Call me what you may, but I completely feel as though this blog post is necessary.  I made the mistake of recently giving my email address to a person or two who clearly don’t see the big deal in sending me constant spams and/or chain letters where my email address is visible to EVERYONE else on their list.  This disturbs me for a plethora of reasons:

• When I gave my email address to said person/people, I didn’t not realize I was giving the okay to accept every spam message, joke, and other piece of junk mail the person could muster up.

• I have ZERO interest in politics. Lately, it seems as though a good 90% of these spam emails contain political opinions, jokes, and/or information. Simply put; I couldn’t care less about politics or any of this drivel I’m being sent on a near daily basis.

• I have a MAJOR problem with my email being visible to everyone on the person’s list. When I give my email address out, I prefer to be the one who decides whom gets my email and who I would rather not have it.  Well, these people who have me on an enormous list of junk mail recipients, have either not given thought to this…or simply don’t care. Either of which is unacceptable to me.

Sooo, this brings me to the heart of the matter. The fine folks over at thanksno.com have taken all of the work out of telling these people where to stick it.  Here’s the sum of what’s said on their site:

Thanks. No.

Hi. The person who sent you this link is a friend who likes you a lot but who wants you to respect their email address, their privacy, and their time.

Chances are, this person asked you to visit this page because you did one of these things:
• Forwarded a funny story, a virus warning, or a photo that you enjoyed
• Sent email to lots of people using the “To:” line (instead of the “BCC:” line), thereby exposing your friend’s email address to strangers
• CC’d your friend unnecessarily on something you had sent primarily to someone else

In any case, you might want to go back and have another look at the email they’re replying to. They asked you to visit here because, while they love getting one-on-one, personal messages from you, they really don’t want to receive more messages like the one you just sent. Cool?

You’re not a bad person, and no one hates you, but it would be valuable to learn the very personal preferences of your friends, family members, and co-workers before including them in unrequested email or choosing to expose their private address to people they don’t know.

So yeah…if you think you might be one of the people I’m referring to here, just play it safe and remove me from your bulk list, okay? I would greatly appreciate it. If all else fails, just ask me how I feel about it. The worst that can happen is I will tell you that I prefer to remain anonymous on your bulk list…and prefer to be taken off of your spam list.