Spam Attack
I am extremely picky about my email, and I seriously ‘HATE’ spam, I am not sure if people realise that it is a CRIME in so many countries to send unsolicited emails and that you are VICTIM of a crime when you receive one. I am doing everything I can to reduce the chances of me receiving spam, my email client is configured to automatically delete emails flagged as Spam by the server email filter, I always report spam to http://ww.spamcop.com, and in addition, I complained to web hosting companies a couple of times of the spam messages sent by their clients. I think that I am somewhat successful in fighting spam for I no longer receive much of it in my primary email addresses.
However, on the 8th of August, I received an unsolicited email from an Omani tourism company (I’m not even going to link to their site so that they don’t get any traffic through me!), I got pissed, I mean, after all the precautions that I’m doing to fight spam, I now get one from Oman?! I replied to their email saying:
Please remove my email from your spam list, I am not interested in a holiday
in Oman, because I am already there!!!
Unbelievably, shamelessly, they REPLIED:
Dear Mr Riyadh, Thanks for your email. Our original contact was sent to you as
you were at University in Britain and perhaps had non Oman friends who wished
to visit Oman having heard about it from you.We will not contact you again.
I couldn’t believe this, I was targeted PERSONALLY for this advertisement, they knew that I was a student in the UK (I am not sure if they knew my name beforehand, because my name is set as the sender), however to make it worse, they believed that because I seemed like a possible client, or that I could have lead a client to them, they had the right to spam me. I got the impression that they THOUGHT that they were doing me A FAVOUR by sending me advertisements that I never asked for. I am sure that these are people that don’t use their emails professionally, they don’t use it as a real method of communications for otherwise they would have realised how irritating it is for one to receive 100s of random email advertisements that they never asked for and can’t ever get rid of. I did spam a couple of times when I was in high school, but then again, I was only a school kid and I do not consider it as an option, even though I do have in possession huge mailing lists of two Omani forums, I just do not think that this is the right thing to do, because I would not like to see anybody do it to me.
Anyway, were you people spammed by the Omani tourism company? Do you mind receiving spam? Do you take any measures to reduce the spam you receive?
