Like pretty much everyone who has even the smallest presence online, I receive spam email offering me all kinds of goods and services. This is so even though I do not use social media much. I believe that marketing companies purchase lists of names and email addresses from organizations that one is affiliated with so I am not surprised when I get offers from publications and organizations which have similar goals to the ones that I subscribe or donate to.
But sometimes I get offers that make me wonder what list that they got that I am on since there is zero chance that I would be interested in what they have to offer. Recently I have been getting many that say that they have seen my resume online and think that I would be a perfect recruit for their business and offering me enticing opportunities to make a lot of money without doing much work, all from the comfort of my home. They never specifically say what it is they saw about me in my resume that they think would be valuable. Given that I am long since retired and have never posted my resume online, it seems like there has been a failure to be more discerning by whoever buys these lists
But the most surprising offer I recently got was from a matchmaking outfit. That in itself is not unusual since online dating and matchmaking is a big thing nowadays, even for people of my advanced age. But this was a highly niche offer, seeking out “busy single professionals between the ages of 26 and 35” who are members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, aka, the Mormons. The offer says that the people behind this venture are students at the University of Utah (the flagship Mormon educational institution) and that they offer a ‘curated’ and ‘personalized’ approach to matchmaking so as to avoid the endless swiping that is supposedly typical of most online matchmaking platforms. [Correction: As kestrel pointed out in the comments, it is Brigham Young University that is the flagship Mormon university, not UU – MS]
Since I am not busy or single or professional or between the ages of 26 and 25 and decidedly not a Mormon and have never enrolled in any dating site, one has to wonder how on Earth my name ever turned up in their lists of potential clients.
The thing about these offers is that it so cheap to send them out that it must be worthwhile spamming pretty much everyone, since even the tiniest hit rate could yield a profit. So we have to resign ourselves to getting useless offers. Fortunately, just as it is so easy to send out spam, it is just as easy to hit ‘delete’ on those offers.
Mano, I think you are correct that the only reasonable response is to delete the spam email. Only unsubscribe from things you signed up for.
But I think you give spammers too much credit to think that they are sending you ads for relevant reasons.
Essentially anyplace on the internet where an email address is posted can be read automatically and the email addresses harvested. The email address brokers sell addresses in bulk, without bothering to attach any information to them generally. So any evil spammer can buy a few 100000 addresses cheaply. Then from a compliant ISP, they can send them 100000 spam emails cheaply. So no human intervention is needed. Because of the low cost, they profit from sending them blindly, figuring that 99.99% of recipients will delete them. But that leaves 100 suckers who are so naive that they start a conversation with a spammer. Which is where they make their money.
Other than deleting spam, the only other defense is to pay companies to look for your information and force the data brokers to delete it. Because there are hundreds of brokers, it only works with an automated company.
Good luck.
“Recently I have been getting many that say that they have seen my resume online and think that I would be a perfect recruit for their business and offering me enticing opportunities to make a lot of money without doing much work, all from the comfort of my home. They never specifically say what it is they saw about me in my resume that they think would be valuable.”
It used to be that sort of spam was an invitation to be, so I was told, a money-laundering mule. Alternatives are phishing for personnel information, advance fee fraud (Spanish Prisoner, 419 scam), etc. Possibly even MLM.
Since I used to live in Salt Lake City, and since my father used to teach there -- University of Utah is considered to be the secular university in UT. It’s Brigham Young University that’s the big Mormon institution. As I recall. PZ Myers was at U of U at least briefly and probably long after my father had moved on.
I agree with Bruce @#1, these are not specifically targeted. I think it’s more of the “shotgun” approach -- send enough out, surely someone will think it’s just for them and respond.
kestrel @#3,
Of course you are right. It Is BYU that. is the flagship Mormon university. Thanks for the correction.
The only committed mormon who is also a distinguished scientist I have heard of is the planetary scientist John S Lewis (retired) (also, a very nice chap).
It does not seem as if scientists are a major focus of their recruitment efforts.
If I may digress a bit, while BYU is a good university the LDS church has a problematic footprint in the film media that belies an interest in science
-- PZ’s followers will be familiar with the podcast God Awful Movies that taunts bad, low-budget religious films, surprisingly many of which are mormon-themed.
Instead of converting people to their viewpoint, this kind of outreach probably scares people away.
-And a strong mormon presence in the conservative ‘culture war’ efforts is certainly not helping with attracting the demographic that gravitates to academia.
My experience with Yahoo is that Unsubscribing two times and Spam notification two times does work. Apparently they have a ‘just once could be an oopsie’ policy. Let them accumulate until you have four emails to do that.
I used to get spam for penis enlargement pills. Not possessing that particular anatomy, it would have been meaningless even if I was gullible enough to respond to spam.
Snowberry: Perhaps they “reason” that there’s a non-zero chance you might be, er, hoping to assist an underwhelming partner who might possess one? (And perhaps I give them too much credit for reasoning at all. 🙂 )