uBlock origin plugin. Globally disable 3p resources for all pages. Manually greylist CDNs only for sites.
Browsing the web any other way is for schnooks.
Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
51–60 of 251 posts
Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
#52This is why I have the username part of my email address tailored to each site/service I register with. So I have a hackernews@example.org, amazon@example.org, etc. Human beings get my real email though (because it would be weird if I told John Smith to email me at johnsmith@example.org). If people start abusing this (politicians do this a lot), I can just block say timkaine@example.org, and never hear from them or p…
This breaks "i forgot my password" links years later when you forget what tag you used to sign up at some rarely-used service. I
stopped doing it.
Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Learning to stop worrying about messing up people's ability to deliver email and just liberally hammer the "REPORT SPAM" button for any email I didn't want to see anymore improved my email experience substantially. So much faster than messing with filters. I also tell Twitter that every ad they show me is offensive. Because they are.
The problem with this is it's easy to start getting legitimate marketing emails that you signed up for filed as spam, because they look similar to the marketing emails that you've been reporting. For example, for a while SpamAssassin decided that every email from the PlayStation store (even receipt emails) was spam, primarily because they look similar to other emails I've marked.
That's strange. Specifically I have marked all of Sony/Playstation's marketing crap "spam" in Gmail, and I marked only one of my PS Store email as "not spam" and never had a problem since.
Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Learning to stop worrying about messing up people's ability to deliver email and just liberally hammer the "REPORT SPAM" button for any email I didn't want to see anymore improved my email experience substantially. So much faster than messing with filters. I also tell Twitter that every ad they show me is offensive. Because they are.
The problem with this is it's easy to start getting legitimate marketing emails that you signed up for filed as spam, because they look similar to the marketing emails that you've been reporting. For example, for a while SpamAssassin decided that every email from the PlayStation store (even receipt emails) was spam, primarily because they look similar to other emails I've marked.
Even worse - these filters appear to be global and I've spent a good amount of time trying to un-train some lazy person's "report this (entirely legitimate) email as spam".
Yes, I am aware this is a fool's errand.
Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
#55This is why I have the username part of my email address tailored to each site/service I register with. So I have a hackernews@example.org, amazon@example.org, etc. Human beings get my real email though (because it would be weird if I told John Smith to email me at johnsmith@example.org). If people start abusing this (politicians do this a lot), I can just block say timkaine@example.org, and never hear from them or p…
This breaks "i forgot my password" links years later when you forget what tag you used to sign up at some rarely-used service. I stopped doing it.
Only if the site is renamed or asks for your username instead of your email to reset a password. `their.domain.com@example.org` means as long as they use `their.domain.com` you'll know which email to check: `their.domain.com@example.org`
Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
#56This is why I have the username part of my email address tailored to each site/service I register with. So I have a hackernews@example.org, amazon@example.org, etc. Human beings get my real email though (because it would be weird if I told John Smith to email me at johnsmith@example.org). If people start abusing this (politicians do this a lot), I can just block say timkaine@example.org, and never hear from them or p…
> If people start abusing this (politicians do this a lot)
I wish I had set something like this up before falling in for the Ron Paul hype in 2008 (sue me, I was 19). Got untold heaps of junk from those jerks for years before I got it under control.
Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
#57I've had several companies ("data partners" they call themselves) approach us to add these scripts to our websites. All of the ones I've seen use MD5(email) for the "anonymous hashing". I mentioned our privacy policy doesn't allow us to give out user emails, and their marketing guys never seem to understand that MD5(email) is basically the same thing. I even made a video example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViCjzJ…
> video example Computerphile recently did a similar example of cudahashcat using a variety of strategies to break passwords. Their goal is to scare people into using better passwords, but the principle is identical to de-anonymising emails. Maybe it can help convince stubborn people? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U-RbOKanYs If nothing convinces the marketing guys, maybe it's time to pull rank and ask to see the C…
I would be surprised to learn that a CS degree outranks a marketing role in a lot of organizations responsible for this kind of nonsense.
Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
#58I once had something similar, if not worse, happen.
I was researching some network equipment, looking at lots of websites and comparing products.
Then my desk phone rings. A call being passed from the switchboard - someone asking for the person responsible for IT purchasing.
It was a sales rep from a network equipment distributor, saying they noticed I was browsing their website and wanted to help me through the purchasing process.
I had never used their website in the past. No-one from my company had. I never signed up. I didn't login. I was bewildered.
I asked how they got my details. The rep said they pay a third party remarketing agency for contact details of people who visit their website.
We were a really small company, with no DNS PTR on our main (NAT'd) public IP. We did have an A-record for our mail domain pointing to this IP.
As the sales rep didn't know my name, all I can assume is that their remarketing agency was looking up our public IP addresses in some IP-to-business database, populated by email headers or sign ups at other user sites.
In any case, I wasn't pleased and was pretty surprised at the rather aggressive sales technique.
Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
#59I once had something similar, if not worse, happen. I was researching some network equipment, looking at lots of websites and comparing products. Then my desk phone rings. A call being passed from the switchboard - someone asking for the person responsible for IT purchasing. It was a sales rep from a network equipment distributor, saying they noticed I was browsing their website and wanted to help me through the purc…
Exact same thing happened to me, though with a different IT-related vendor.
Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam
#60>The CAN SPAM act actually allows direct marketing email messages to be sent to anyone, without permission, until the recipient explicitly requests that they cease (opt-out).
Isn't this the root problem here? It is hard to see how you could even start to fix this sort of thing without fixing the spam law first.