Old People on the Internet - Page 2 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

The Goon · 03-10-2009, 09:57 AM

After replying to so many of my Mom's emails with a debunking link on Snopes, now she sends me the links and says, "Could you check this on Snopes for me?"

4X4 · 03-10-2009, 09:59 AM

I get alot of email from my dad. Half of it is interesting science stuff and the other half is some forwarded crap that circulated through his church friends' inboxes about things like John Q. Religious Guy on the economy and how the US needs to move closer to God to fix the economy and all the problems in the world. (delete)

Ford Prefect · 03-10-2009, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rathji

... I do have one rule about email that comes to me if it is forwarded to you, you must not forward it to me. You must take the entire contents of the email, remove any arrows ( >>>> ) from the beginning of each line and the addresses of the 72 people who forwarded it to you. You may then send me whatever is left. If you cannot do this, then I will put your email into my spam box and that means I will never get any important email from you. This is your choice." ...

Ya, that's my rule too. Things are pretty good right now because there are no interweb noobies in the family right now. It's the noobies that are the worst for this. There's only one old guy who still sends me stuff, and he's generally pretty selective about what he sends so I don't mind.

One other thing that I told everybody is that these forwarded e-mail things are just a plot by spammers to harvest e-mail addresses. The set these things in motion and let them collect strings of addresses that they can harvest. And that even goes for the cute little missing girl from Minnesota. I don't know if spammers actually harvest addresses like that, but people seem to believe me and it generally works to get them to stop sending me shist.

FurnaceFace · 03-10-2009, 12:44 PM

From the OP, I keyed on the annoyance of having the crackberry go off all day long with these types of messages. Why not setup another email address which you hand out to your Uncle and other family members or friends who do this sort of thing and then not setup this address on your phone? You're then in control of when you respond to these messages and can deal with them appropriately.

I'm a big believe in setting up email rules so you could set some up based on the sender or even keywords so you can choose to ignore as much as possible and easily scan the messages they send for something with a subject which looks "important" or original instead of forwarded.

I'm sure there are also a number of sites which have "email etiquette" postings which you could forward on as a hint.

ernie · 03-10-2009, 12:55 PM

I have a similar problem with an Aunt. What I do is have all of her mail sent to the Junk folder and that way my mobile doesn't buzz non-stop throughout the day (never buzzes for something going to the junk folder).

Then at the end of the day I go through the Junk folder to see if she actually sent me something importnant.

This only works if you aren't filtering out a gazillion junk messages a day.

Eastern Girl · 03-10-2009, 12:58 PM

My mom sends me tons of chainletter emails, typically the lovey dovey sentimental type chainletters. They always have a picture of an angel or something, and they have some cheesy poems about being there for someone you love, then at the end, they say send this to everyone you love so they have a guardian angel watching over them... or some junk.

My mom is an intelligent woman, but whenever she sends me one of these emails, I just shake my head.

Yeah_Baby · 03-10-2009, 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eastern Girl

My mom sends me tons of chainletter emails, typically the lovey dovey sentimental type chainletters. They always have a picture of an angel or something, and they have some cheesy poems about being there for someone you love, then at the end, they say send this to everyone you love so they have a guardian angel watching over them... or some junk.

My mom is an intelligent woman, but whenever she sends me one of these emails, I just shake my head.

At least she hasn't singed you up for eHarmony of something yet, you spinster you.

Eastern Girl · 03-10-2009, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yeah_Baby

At least she hasn't singed you up for eHarmony of something yet, you spinster you.

It's funny that you say that, because I actually think someone did sign me up. All of a sudden, I was getting all these emails from eHarmony about dating tips and emails telling me my window of opportunity to sign up was closing. I got about 20 emails from them. I really do think someone tried to sign me up.

But, I'm a spinster for life!! eHarmony can't change that.

fredr123 · 03-10-2009, 01:34 PM

My mother used to be pretty bad for sending those "send this to 10 people" emails or the "this happened to someone I know and I want you to be aware of the horrors of Mr. Clean Erasers" messages. I gave her a link to a snopes article once and told her to stop forwarding me all that stuff and... surprise! She stopped. She still returns my phone calls too.

My dad, on the other hand, is learning all about the exciting world of limewire and other means of downloading stuff from the web. It was a pretty common occurrence to get calls from him asking how to remove this or that or why the computer keeps trying to dial a 1-900 phone number all the time. His computer is riddled with porn and popups and I would guess that at least 30% of it is stuff he didn't intend to download.

The Goon · 03-10-2009, 01:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fredr123

My dad, on the other hand, is learning all about the exciting world of limewire and other means of downloading stuff from the web. It was a pretty common occurrence to get calls from him asking how to remove this or that or why the computer keeps trying to dial a 1-900 phone number all the time. His computer is riddled with porn and popups and I would guess that at least 30% of it is stuff he didn't intend to download.

I found this to be the case when I visited my parents in January. I used this article to help organize their system the best I could:

http://lifehacker.com/5112548/help-c...puter-problems

GreenTeaFrapp · 03-10-2009, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eastern Girl

But, I'm a spinster for life!! eHarmony can't change that.

Sounds like you need some cats. Maybe your dad's girlfriend will give you a couple for Christmas this year.

Tron_fdc · 03-10-2009, 03:57 PM

I get the occasional email from my old man that he sometimes gets from his pals. He thinks it's the greatest/most important thing in the world, and sends it to me.

Unfortunately I'm on the cutting edge of the email porn/joke/hoax world, so it's usually a month or so old.

photon · 03-10-2009, 03:59 PM

My mom was on facebook before I was! And thank goodness she doesn't spam me with tons of stuff.

But for other old people.

*click*

*click*

*click*

CMON GRANDMA! Either drive that mouse or park it!

flip · 03-10-2009, 04:00 PM

Can't we just exterminate all old people?

Or at least develop a plan to have them gone in 10-15 years?

Yeah_Baby · 03-10-2009, 04:01 PM

I told my Mom if she got Facebook I would decline her friend invite......

Yeah_Baby · 03-10-2009, 04:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flip

Can't we just exterminate all old people?

Or at least develop a plan to have them gone in 10-15 years?

Too extreme. Should probably just tax them every year from 65 on.

redforever · 03-10-2009, 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rathji

My mom and grandma used to send me these. I sat them down and said:

"Look, I don't care how much you send me, I don't care what it is, but if I do have one rule about email that comes to me if it is forwarded to you, you must not forward it to me. You must take the entire contents of the email, remove any arrows ( >>>> ) from the beginning of each line and the addresses of the 72 people who forwarded it to you. You may then send me whatever is left. If you cannot do this, then I will put your email into my spam box and that means I will never get any important email from you. This is your choice."

Now that is a lot to ask of someone who is used to just hitting 2 buttons to send this hideous (and quite useless) email to their entire contact list. Now my mother only sends me things that are worth her time to clean up. My grandmother, bless her soul, ended up in the spam box, so I only need to talk to her when my Grandpa opens an attachment on his email or deletes his entire inbox of get rich scams he bought off the internet.

I started getting mail from people I never knew, with all the >>>>> and all the e-mail addresses visible too. I looked at the addresses that were visible and determined that we had mutual friends but did not know one another. So they were just sending out mass mailings to all contacts, including the ones already on the forwarded list.

First of all, I sent the mail back to people I never knew and told them that although we obviously had mutual friends, we did not know one another and as such, I did not want mail from them and I told them to clean up their contacts list and remove me as a contact.

Then I sent all my contacts a tutorial.

First of all, I told them of the tip above that you mentioned above. I also told them how to clean up the subject line by removing " Fw: "

Then I told them, that I refuse to open up an attachment that leads to yet another attachment that leads to yet another attachment..... That if they wished to send me that final attachment, they have to forward at the last stage, not the first stage.

Then I told them that they should bcc, not use to: That way, the names and addresses of the intended recipients are hidden.

And I told them that prior to sending me yet another warning, they better check it out on snopes and gave them the web address for that site as well.

And I told them, that while I love them all dearly, I am sorry, but I have never kept up the chain letters that they have sent me, and in fact, most have not even been looked at. And I kind of warned them, that if they want to keep internet free in the future, then they should be careful about how much spam they themselves initiate and circulate. Bandwidth is an issue that will escalate if rubbish just keeps circulating.

It has been a month, at least I no longer get mailings from friends of friends.

JohnnyFlame · 03-10-2009, 04:22 PM

I think this whole thread is an affront to "Cheese". We all know he is far older than the Internet--older than color TV. I suspect he was around the last time the Leafs won the CUP. The guy is an ancient. Now noone will be able to look at his posts in the same way. Poor old Cheese!!!!!!!!!!

TheyCallMeBruce · 03-10-2009, 05:05 PM

Send them to a malware/trojan site and problem solved!

Eastern Girl · 03-10-2009, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GreenTeaFrapp

Sounds like you need some cats. Maybe your dad's girlfriend will give you a couple for Christmas this year.

No way she would give me a cat for Christmas, unless she had teased it or it were diseased or possibly dead. That's her MO. Mismatched set of gloves, knee high socks, diseased cat...