Amen. My attitude now is that it’s 2005 and I no longer forgive email or internet ignorance.

And don’t send me any of those stupid virus warnings either - or any other sort of chain email. Learn to use snopes.com. etc… .

Preach on bruthaman. One more to add: If you’re going to forward that chain letter, remove the 29 lines of “>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BOB SAID” that just makes any e-mail violently unreadable.

Whenever I receive a message with that horrible semi-lawyer speak at the end, I use the following signature in my reply:

DISCLAIMER:

By sending an email to ANY of my addresses you are agreeing that:

1. I am by definition, “the intended recipient”;
2. All information in the email is mine to do with as I see fit and make such financial profit, political mileage, or good joke as it lends itself to. In particular, I may quote it on my weblog;
3. I may take the contents as representing the views of your company;
4. This overrides any disclaimer or statement of confidentiality that may be included on your message.

And don’t forget:

• Copying the contents of the 20 previous emails in the sequence at the end of your email without ever referring to them;

• Signing off with ‘Kind Regards’ (it doesn’t mean anything).

Re: serial unsolicited commercial emails after unsubscribe requests

Do you by any change run any computer (say, a DSL router or wifi AP) which permits users to connect to the internet, for example to read their email? If so, I’d say you’re an Internet Access Service Provider under the definition in CAN-SPAM, and you can certainly feel free to let the spammer who refuses to unsubscribe you from their list know that. And cc the corporate counsel and/or CEO on your next unsubscribe notice. Be sure to point out that once you’ve notified them not to send you any more unsolicited commercial emails, that if they do so again, that’s clearly willful violation of the law exposing them to treble damages. This strategy has worked great for me in the past. Sometimes it’s tricky to track down the general counsel, but often it’s pretty straightforward.

I’d add

1. Huge, unexpected, and not necessarily relevant attachments. I just received a 1/2 MB attachment of this sort (sort of a press release, more or less), sent to everyone in my department.
2. Minutes of meetings sent as attached .doc files when they could be sent as plain text e-mails (i.e., there’s no complex formatting). Must we be that formal and MSWord-centric?
3. Students who send e-mail without signing (and with no name in the address.) Who are you? Such stuff prompted me to write some guidelines about how to e-mail a professor— http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2005/01/how-to-e-mail-professor.html
4. Elaborate sig files on e-mails from people in your own workplace. Whom do they think they’re writing to?

Mine looked fine in the preview too. Where’d the bold come from?

(Sorry about the weird formatting. Seems to hate OLs)

I’d Add…

The blank email where the entire message is typed into the subject line.

I hate that!

As far as the lawyer-speak goes, for some reason, some companies are requiring employees to use it when they email outside the company. So the sender might not be the person to complain to about it…