|
|
The
views expressed
on this page are soley those of the author and do not
necessarily
represent the views of County News Online
|
E-Mail Tracker Programs and More
From a CNO Reader
By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with snopes.comand/or
truthorfiction.com for determining whether information received via
email is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent
sites.
Advice from
snopes.com
1) Any time you see an email that says "forward this on to '10' (or
however many) of your friends", "sign this petition", or "you'll get
bad luck" or "you'll get good luck" or "you'll see something funny on
your screen after you send it" or whatever --- it almost always has an
email tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and emails of
those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time
it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' email
addresses to use in SPAM emails or sell to other Spammers. Even when
you get emails that demand you send the email on if you're not ashamed
of God/Jesus --- that is email tracking, and they are playing on our
conscience. These people don't care how they get your email addresses -
just as long as they get them. Also, emails that talk about a missing
child or a child with an incurable disease "how would you feel if that
was your child" --- email tracking. Ignore them and don't participate!
2) Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward on to
others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to
send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break
the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all
any of this type of email is, is a way to get names and 'cookie'
tracking information for telemarketers and Spammers -- to validate
active email accounts for their own profitable purposes.
You can do your Friends and Family members a GREAT favor by sending
this information to them. You will be providing a service to your
friends. And you will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam
emails in the future!
Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of
listing regardless how inviting they might sound! Or make you feel
guilty if you don't! It's all about getting email addresses and nothing
more.
You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT!
Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later and very possibly
a virus attached! Plus, we are helping the Spammers get rich! Let's not
make it easy for them!
ALSO: Email petitions are NOT acceptable to government or any other
organization - e.g. Social security, etc. To be acceptable, petitions
must have a "signed signature" and full address of the person signing
the petition, so this is a waste of time and you are just helping the
email trackers.
And another important point is to delete all previous names from your
emails before forwarding!!! Send emails to your entire address list BCC
then everyone after you doesn't get your friend's email address.
Tips
for Handling Telemarketers… Three Little Words That Work!!
(1) The three little
words are: 'Hold On, Please...'
Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of
hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more
time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.
Then when you eventually hear the phone company's 'beep-beep-beep'
tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has
efficiently completed its task.
These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.
(2) Do you ever get
those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?
This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and
records the time of day when a person answers the phone.
This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a 'real'
sales person to call back and get someone at home.
What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there,
is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7
times as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialled
the call, and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a
shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!
(3) Junk Mail Help:
When you get ads enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these
ads with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk
mail away.
When you get those 'pre-approved' letters in the mail for everything
from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw
away the return envelope.
Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs
them more than the regular postage, 'IF' and when they receive them
back.
It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50
cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In
that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it
in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.
One of Andy Rooney's
(60 minutes) ideas (editor
note: not verified)
Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a
pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day,
then just send them their blank application back!
If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on
anything you send them.
You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep
them guessing! It still costs them 60 cents.
The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of
their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them.
Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best
of all they're paying for it...Twice!
Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that
e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they need
to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!
If enough people follow these tips, it will work I have been doing this
for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.
-- Pray for Peace - God Bless America
|
|
|
|
