If You Are Tired of SPAM

I am tired of spam. When I was a real estate agent, I signed up for my RealtorAssociation not realizing that the real estate industry looks to make money from every angle possible, including having their email lists snagged by every possible real estate related industry business so you get spam forever and a day.

I won't even touch on the advertisers that are allowed to spam you in-network like on the tools you pay for to do your job.

So every Tom, Harry and DICK who's looking to send you their real estate related sales pitch hits this database up and collects the email addresses, in one fashion or another.

I love the "businesses" with the aol or hotmail or yahoo addresses. That's just too funny and so unprofessional looking that it almost doesn't even merit a nod. Just go away people.

At some point, I want to be able to stop some of these nuisances. For instance, the Genesis Training Group based in Idaho doesn't get it. Their link to unsubscribe seems to be fake, or more to the point, does not work. So I've sent them 5 Opt-Out requests to no avail.

I know I've opted out 5 times. I keep an excel spread sheet, sorted by originating email address, the date and the action I took on that date. In my mind, when you keep records and have to refer to them when contacting the authorities it holds more water than just gesturing in air with your arms in words.

So after my fifth request, what the heck to do I do? When I'm just sick enough from a source, I report SPAM. That's what I do.

If you want to report a specific ISP sender, you can use these email adresses:

Hotmail report_spam@hotmail.com
MSN report_spam@msn.com
GMail gmail-abuse@google.com
Report GMail spam*
Menu Option to "Report Spam"
AOL*
tosspam
Yahoo! Stores store-spam@yahoo-inc.com
Yahoo! Hosted Domans domains-abuse@yahoo-inc.com

* These options are for internal, ISP users. IE: An AOL account can forward their spam email to tosspam in the AOL system. (source: spamlinks.net)

If you receive emails that appear to exploit children, by all means, report it immediately to the CyberTipLine website.

If you are inclined to get securities related spam, you can forward the offending emails to:
enforcement@sec.gov

Per the SEC Center for Complaints and Enforcement Tips web page.

Anyway, back to my battle. I've got a site that's sent me emails a few more times despite my "Opt Out" messages to them. It's time to test the process!!

Comments are always welcome from Place of Thoughts readers.

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