its all so evil. Just think if they make 1 penny per email that they hit that is "active" and they sent it to 1 million people, thats alot of pennies! its so profitable.

There are many ways to find out "active" email lists. Take the "send this to 10 friends in 10 mins or risk your ears falling off" type email or a wonderful joke, or even a "missing child" please pass this on! most folks click to add 20 or so friends, and send it on. As that email leaves your system, it sends out a tracker to the original maker of it and it send him/her ALL of those email addresses you just sent it out to (including the BCC ones) aha! now he has 20 to add, and each of your 20 friends will send it out to 20 friends and now we have hundreds of new active emails to send "ear enlargment" pills to.

All of those petitions that want your email addy, and your "digital signature" with your zip code to send to the government...the government WONT take email petitions. Never has, never will! they MUST be real signatures with pen and ink. All those charities that collect 1 penny per digital signature for breast cancer or whatever, WONT work.

The problem is that WE as human beings want to share something funny with our friends. We want to see the latest maxine cartoon, or that funny puppy, and when we forward it on we pass on our friends names. Just COPY and PASTE it onto a NEW word document and then mail it to whomever you want. it will have NO tracker on it and the spammers loose.

This made me think, do you remember all those "prepaid" envelopes we used to get with credit card offers? Want to make them pay? Stuff it full of your kids art work or a magazine article or what ever you wish. (the heavier the better!) for 4 sheets of regular paper they pay 50 cents. The heavier the package the more expensive it is for the post office to send it back to them. My son used to be so excited to think those folks at Citibank were gonna see HIS artwork! If we all start doing this, it will become so expensive for them to send those things out (and kill all those trees) they will stop sending them to folks that cant afford a new credit card, or dont want to change their insurance, or dont care about a hoover round chair. ENOUGH! make them pay! plus this will keep the post office afloat if we start using it again. lol

Telemarketers bugging you? ever get that phone call and NO ONE is on the other end? Well, that is a computer dialing program that tracks that a REAL person answered that phone at this time of day. Trust me, someone WILL be calling you about this time of day tomorrow or the day after. If you get that blank silent air and the caller ID isnt someone you know. Hit the # key! over and over and as quickly as you can. it confuses the computer on the other end, and DROPS your # as being a working # so you will be taken off that list you were about to be put on.

Ah, having fun with telemarketers. gotta love it.

That's a great suggestion for all those prepaid envelopes, Dej! I'm gonna do it!

You know what I hate? Those life insurance offers that have the application partially filled out with your personal information. Now I can't just toss the unwanted mail....I have to open it and look for all the pages that have my name, address and phone number on them. I do shred them and recycle but it's a pain to know that if someone else happened to get my junk mail they'd have just about all the info they needed to steal my identity. Who on earth would want to be me??????

I'll ask my friendly mail person how that works, because they're the ones who have to carry all that heavy return mail. If it doesnt work, that would be cruel for them..

That upsets me when I open Spam snail mail and see MY name already filled in all over the place! Alot of my info is splattered in several different spots, and I have to shred and shred and look and look to be sure I didnt miss a page. I got upset at my mom one day for just throwing stuff away. I grabbed the trash bag that she was ready to throw out, and showed her. I found her SS# her DL# her DOB# her address her insurance carrier, her mothers maiden name, her retirement company, and so on. She was shocked from one small bag of trash how much information including her credit card # I was able to find. We got her a shredder that day.

If you dont want to be IDd then dont return anything with your info in it to those envelopes. When Citibank and Bank of America and Progressive and so forth start having to pay 50cents per evelope they will start thinking twice when Americans start returning them at their cost! I opted out of many companys but the church of scientology is really making me quite mad! Every stinking day I get something from this place begging me to visit their church! I dont even get mailers from my own church, and this church isnt even in our corner of the state! WTH?? I have called, written, begged, and pleaded for them to STOP! so...now they get newspaper clippings or magazine articles. with a letter attached REMOVE ME from your mailings!

Ah, fun with spammers.