Seriously. How many more times?
Me: (To some near stranger.) Please don’t put me on a mailing list without asking first. And if you must send mailings to multiple recipients, please, for the sake of everybody’s privacy, use bcc or create an alias for the group that hides the addresses.
Other person: (If the mailings are political.) I can’t believe you don’t want to receive My Glorious Truths!!!! You’re a big phony! You don’t care anything about freedom!!!!!! Okay then. I’ll take you off my mailing list! You don’t deserve to be on it anyhow!!!!!!!!!!
Other person: (If the mailings are non-political.) I didn’t put you on a mailing list! I just sent a joke to a bunch of friends. Well, guess now I know you just don’t have a sense of humor.
Other person: (Alternative answer.) What’s bcc? If you want me to do that, you’re going to have to tell me how.
Very occasionally, I actually get a “Sorry. I won’t do it again.”
Sigh. I wrote “Libertarians and the Privacy of Friends” fourteen years ago. Bill St. Clair kindly archives it and it still occasionally turns up elsewhere. No, I don’t expect the whole world to have read My Glorious Truths. But.
“Privacy of Friends” was written back in the dark ages, when many people thought these Intertubz and the whole email thingie were newfangled playtoys. Some ignorance of privacy and netiquette was perhaps to be expected. Back. Then. By now, people should have become much more skilled and aware in their computer use — especially with horrific privacy breaches (latest — and relatively minor — example) and malware horror stories constantly in the news.
There just ain’t no excuse any more.
The majority of people who use computers still have no idea how a computer works or how to use it beyond a few simple tasks like browsing the Internet or sending a simple email. To expect them to use bcc is beyond the pale when they probably do not even have that option enabled that shows the bcc field.
I could not disagree with you more, Mac. If someone wants to use a tool (or be one), they should know the proper SAFE use before they involve other people. Ignorance should not be an excuse simply because one hasn’t taken the time to look through a user manual.
I spent 10 years of my career working as tech support for a major corporation and I can’t tell you how many times people brushed me off when I tried to explain to them they were putting other people’s privacy/security at risk by not knowing one or two simple things. The vast majority of the time I was brushed off because the Luser “didn’t have time” for me to show them where to turn on the bcc function in Word.
Sorry, not Word; Outlook. I have Word set as my email editor.
Gotta agree with Desiree. It might be unrealistic of me to expect computer users to learn and observe some basic safety and courtesy rules. But it’s not unreasonable.
Even stupid people have to learn to stop at stop signs and signal for turns when they drive. Everybody has to learn Cooper’s four rules before being allowed on a shooting range. They learn to handle knives and forks and use decent table manners before going out to dinner at a restaurant (at least the well-brought-up ones do). Even five-year-olds learn to say “please” and “thank you” when dealing with others. I can’t see anything wrong with expecting people to know basic courtesy and safety toward others when they use e-devices.
I have shown my mother the BCC option several times, and STILL get stuff form her with everyone’s email right there for all to see.
Recently, I got a political email from someone that was the same way, and I wrote him back, thanking him nicely for forwarding the item, but pointing out how much nicer it would be if he had used BCC. I haven’t heard from him since.
“Other person: (If the mailings are non-political.) I didn’t put you on a mailing list! I just sent a joke to a bunch of friends. Well, guess now I know you just don’t have a sense of humor.”
I had this same response recently from someone when I protested to them about an emailing. In fact, also Facebook has my email address because somebody sent me request to be “my friend” and wanted to send me family photos. And I’ve heard from Facebook inviting me to open an account. (Which I have to “confirm” my eddress if I wish to be taken off their list. I don’t think so…)
Speaking of privacy, how come my Name and Mail is now automatically placed on “Leave a Reply” whenever I open this blog? Should I talk to BHM about that? Ordinarily I have to write it in (which I prefer to do) when I want to comment.
I pay for my own domain hosting and have a “catch all” email account set up. I give a unique email address to every place that demands one (for example, my bank would be mybankname@mydomain.com) and each of these unique addresses goes to the same mailbox. I can easily ban any sender and if I see spam coming to that address, I can ban the entire address to cut all ties.
This has worked amazingly well. I am virtually spam-free and loving it.
As to the deluge of forwarded junk emails from friends and family, some education has worked wonders. I don’t get sent much of anything that isn’t personally directed at me. And I’ve never even had to resort to threats of engineering a denial of service attack against their email server!
Pat — You’ll need to ask Oliver Del Signore about why your name and email are automatically placed with comments. I didn’t realize that was happening. Are you able to change the info that’s given?
Ugh. Having “friends” give your email address to Facebook. Some friends.
JR — Good practice. I also have several options like that. I have two domains on which I can set up any email addresses I like — though I would have to go online and do it ahead of time if I wanted to give a special address to somebody. I also subscribe to the privacy service cotse.net, which offers the great feature of letting me make up addresses on the fly of the type you describe.
I get very little spam (although it varies at times). But watching the cotse.net addresses that become spam addresses, I’m surprised at how many companies and websites exercise absolutely no security over the addresses people give them. Amazon.com, though I love it, is probably responsible for putting me in the way of more spam than anybody. I think it began when they SOLD my addy to legitimate companies, then those companies lost control. (Amazon doesn’t do that any more.)
A few months ago I subscribed to email alerts at Mark Sisson’s “Mark’s Daily Apple” primal nutrition site. I received one so-called alert, and when that turned out to be an ad, not containing a single useful bit of information, I immediately unsubscribed. They had my address on an active list for a day, at most. Yet now my “marksapple” address has become the second-biggest source of spam. So I’ve blacklisted it or declared it a dead alias on cotse.net.
People are so unconscious! I was in a store with a friend when I gave one of those “on the fly” addresses. I explained to both the friend and the clerk how and why I was able to give the store its own customized address. I mentioned that I could do the same for anybody — including the friend — to track and prevent spam. My friend immediately said, “Oh no. You know I’d never give your address to spammers!” Yet that person constantly sends me open-cc forwards that contain dozens, if not hundreds, of earlier recipients’ email addresses. She forwards them with open ccs to her contacts. And they forward them … and it’s spam heaven.
Sometimes I just can’t cancel an address because somebody’s a fool. The latest open cc joke forward I got came from a contractor who’s done work for me in the past and will be doing more. Can’t cut off all email to him. So now I’ve gotta go through the whole damn privacy talk with him. I get so tired of it!
“Pat — You’ll need to ask Oliver Del Signore about why your name and email are automatically placed with comments.”
Thanks. I’ve sent an email to Oliver. It shows on his blog as well, where I’ve commented before. It doesn’t show on the other three blogs at BHM.
My info here shows until I close Firefox once and for all, even if I’ve wandered away from this site in the meantime…..since I dump everything when closing FF, the next time in I have to re type in all of it……
I’m probably the least comp savvy out of most people and even I learned the bcc part of emailing almost immediately…….except I have to admit I’ve gotten some good eddresses off some other peoples’ ignorance of that feature *sheepish grin*…..
RE: name and email staying in the comment box:
This blog runs on wordpress does it not? It’s just cookies…Clear your browser history and it will go away.
RE: name and email staying in the comment box:
It could also be your browser. Firefox has a facility that remembers your input so the next time you get the same prompt it can give you your choice of previous responses.
@Desiree: Politically active people should not be using Microsoft products. http://www.goodbyemicrosoft.net/news.php?item.633.4
[…] middle of three posts yesterday asked “How many more times do I have to have this conversation?” It’s […]
I use Firefox along with Start Page and Ghostery… and my history is automatically cleared when FF is closed. I haven’t changed any parameters for weeks, and my AV indicates no bad guys have been intercepted. Thanks for all suggestions, but this is an internal problem with BHM, I think.
@Samuel Adams: Thanks for the link…good reads. I had heard about the probs with IE. I use FF and like many users here, have it set up to delete history on exit.