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When Spam Confirmation E-mails Suck

Spam is the bane of all who are online — except for the spammers of course! In the last couple weeks I’ve chatted with some onliners who complain about the fact they do not receive responses to inquiries when they use spam systems that require a sender to click a link and fill out a form, just to respond to their reply.

If you have a system in place like the one I describe, do so knowing that some will not respond to that confirmation and you will not receive the answers you seek. Especially if you initiated the contact by e-mailing them first!

When e-mailing a Web site or contact for the first time asking for their assistance or answers to questions you may have — =the onus is on you to add their domain to your whitelist or “approved senders” so that you make it easy for them to help you or answer your concerns.
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E-mail Etiquette and Discretion

Discretion:

1. Freedom to act or judge on one’s own
2. Knowing how to avoid embarrassment or distress
3. Refined taste; tact
4. The power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies
5. The trait of judging wisely and objectively

O.K., so based on the above, one can easily surmise how much discretion comes into play when it comes to your e-mail activities. Just a few examples off the top of my head of not using discretion properly:

• Forwarding a private e-mail sent to you by someone who trusts you to others without the sender’s knowledge.
• Forwarding “warm and fuzzy” e-mails that state to “Send to Everyone You Know” with their e-mail addresses all exposed in the To: field.
• Sending attachments without the courtesy of asking first.

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Thank You E-mails Do Make a Difference

Often is discussed whether you should send an e-mail reply that just has a simple “Thank You!.” One could say that to be a waste of time or that you are creating an unnecessary e-mail being added to the recipient’s inbox. I do get e-mails on a regular basis making this claim.

I have to wonder what type of society we live in where one has to ask if sending a Thank You e-mail is O.K. If everyone were courteous and e-mails simply stating “Thank You” were coming in by the handful, I could see where it may become an issue. But that’s not what is happening.
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Identifying E-mail Hoaxes and Scams

“Send to all your friends!” “Send to everyone in your address book!” You know my advice; when you see those words it’s best you just hit delete!

Even worse are the e-mails offering unbelievable deals and coupons — only for you and your friends!

How do you determine if something is legit that you may be interested in, and that peaks your interest just enough to cause an itch to forward? Before you forward an e-mail, (and this includes forwards that were forwarded to you from someone who had it forwarded to them) it is your responsibility to determine if the e-mail is even factual. Period. If you are not sure — delete!
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E-mail Signature File Separators?

You may be asking what is a signature separator? I had a bit of a nostalgic feeling when one of my site visitors commented that I do not mention “sig-separators” on NetManners. com.

I used to use one myself a decade ago when I was an avid Newsgroup participant but haven’t seen the need to do so in years. And, rarely do I see a sig-separator used in all the e-mails I receive. You may have even seen a sig-separator here and there and wondered why those two little dashes were included above the sender’s signature file.

So we have to go into the Web Wayback Machine…

In the beginning of all this when folks used Newsgroups quite a bit (now known as groups) it was important to have a “–” and a line break before your signature file. (Hyphen, hyphen, space, newline.) At that time Newsgroups were pretty much it and had quite heavy traffic.
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