My wife and I keep having these 'discussions' about my spam (sent to my public email address that I've had since around '95). She sees it piling up in my junk mail folder and has to press me about it about once a week now. It's really getting annoying.
Her: "Why do you get so much porn email? You wouldn't get that kind of mail if you hadn't been to those kinds of site."
Me: "Yeah, right. You don't do anything to get spam. It's unsolicited email for Pete's Sake."
Her: "But I don't get that kind of email."
Me: "You use Yahoo and I'm not familiar with their spam filters so it's possible that they are blocking it for you."
We had this 'discussion' a few days ago and it occurred to me to take a different approach so I called her.
Me: "You remember the email 'discussion' we had? Well, I just thought of something that you probably haven't taken into account. You don't have your email address plastered all over the 'net like I do. Have you ever Googled for my email address?"
Her: "Uh, no. Why?"
Me: "Try it sometime. I just did and got 136 hits. Spammers scour the internet looking for email addresses. They find mine and not yours so I get the spam and you don't."
I'll have to wait and see if she pesters me about it again.
Re:Mailboxes
Mr. Muskrat on 2005-06-17T13:24:37
Rafael,
I haven't given up hope of convincing her. The less tech savvy someone is, the harder it is to get the point across though. Especially when they think that they know more than they really do.I've taught my wife quite a bit over the years (how to operate a browser, check email, not to punch the monkey or open attachments from anyone, that sort of thing). I'll try to describe it in terms of grade school. She's graduated past computer pre-school and kindergarten. She's working at about the 1st grade level in the generalized school of computing. That's the problem, as much as I try to teach her more, she's perfectly happy where she's at (thinking all the while that she's on the 4th or 5th grade level).
If the point that I raised last doesn't work, I'm just going to have to use the trust card. "If you trust me, you'll believe that what I'm telling you is true." Trust is one of the things in a relationship that I hate to question. If the other person develops the slightest bit of doubt, then you end up fighting a swarm of trust issues.
Re:593
Mr. Muskrat on 2005-06-17T13:27:04
I'm helped by the fact that many of the sites that listed my email address have disappeared.:)
I'll be glad when another hundred or so vanish. I'm not very proud of my earliest works (it was some ugly, ugly javascript and perl).
