If you are fed up of receiving newsletters from companies long after you have unsubscribed from them, or from sources to which you never subscribed in the first place, you might like to follow the example of British creative developer Rory Ashford. Don’t let the word ‘developer’ put you off – this isn’t a high-tech solution that involves writing millions of lines of code or installing hard-to-configure software. In fact, its elegant simplicity, along with its undoubted effectiveness, is what makes it so appealing.
When you find out just how simple the solution is, you’ll probably kick yourself for not having thought of it yourself. So, without further ado here it is:
Instead of trying to unsubscribe from a newsletter for the hundredth time, simply change your email address to one that belongs to the sender of the email. That way, they will receive their own junk mail and perhaps be moved to do something about it.
As you can see, it really is the easiest and most elegant solution to junk mail and spam that you could imagine. Credit should go to Mr Ashford not only for identifying the solution in the first place but for spreading the word about it too. Turning the spammers’ ammunition back on themselves may not be the only possible answer to junk mail but it is definitely one of the most satisfying. The feeling of natural justice that arises from redirecting unwanted newsletters back to source is hard to beat for those who are at their wits end, struggling to cope with the deluge of spam they receive on a daily basis.
If you cannot find an email address to use, simply use the domain name of the website in question and prefix it with admin@ or info@. The email will then end up in their default mail folder.