Mail Trackers - Good to Know

Subject: Mail trackers - this is good to know

This is great, check it all out!

It doesn't matter if you have seen this before - it's worth reading again.

E-Mail Tracker Programs -- very interesting and a must read!

The man that sent this information is a computer tech. He spends a
lot of time clearing the junk off computers for people and listens to
complaints about speed. Not all forwards are bad, just some. Be sure
you read the very last paragraph.

_________________________________________

He wrote:

By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with snopes.Com and/or
truthorfiction.Com for determining whether information received via
email is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent sites.

Advice from snopes.Com VERY IMPORTANT!!

1) Any time you see an email that says "forward this on to '10' (or
however many) of your friends", "sign this petition", or "you'll get
bad luck" or "you'll get good luck" or "you'll see something funny on
your screen after you send it" or whatever --- it almost always has
an email tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and emails
of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy
each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active'
email addresses to use in SPAM emails or sell to other
Spammers. Even when you get emails that demand you send the email on
if you're not ashamed of God/Jesus --- that is email tracking, and
they are playing on our conscience. These people don't care how they
get your email addresses - just as long as they get them. Also,
emails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable
disease "how would you feel if that was your child" --- email
tracking. Ignore them and don't participate!

2) Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward on to
others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to
send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break
the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all
any of this type of email is, is a way to get names and 'cookie'
tracking information for telemarketers and Spammers -- to validate
active email accounts for their own profitable purposes.

You can do your Friends and Family members a GREAT favor by sending
this information to them. You will be providing a service to your
friends. And you will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam
emails in the future!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(S) to those types of
listing regardless how inviting they might sound! Or make you feel
guilty if you don't! It's all about getting email addresses and nothing more.

You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT!

Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later and very
possibly a virus attached! Plus, we are helping the Spammers get
rich! Let's not make it easy for them!

ALSO: Email petitions are NOT acceptable to Government or any other
organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed
signature and full address of the person signing the petition, so
this is a waste of time and you are just helping the email trackers.

Tips for Handling Telemarketers

Three Little Words That Work!!

(1)The three little words are: 'Hold On, Please...'

Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead
of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much
more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear the phone company's 'beep-beep-beep'
tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which
has efficiently completed its task.

These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting..

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?

This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls
and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a 'real'
sales person to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one
there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6
or 7 times as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that
dialed the call, and it kicks your number out of their system.. Gosh,
what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!

(3) Junk Mail Help:

When you get 'ads' enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return
these 'ads' with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their
own junk mail away.

When you get those 'pre-approved' letters in the mail for
everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk,
do not throw away the return envelope.

Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It
costs them more than the regular 44 cents postage, 'IF' and when they
receive them back.

It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was
around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the
weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail
and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.

One of Andy Rooney 's (60 minutes) ideas.

Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a
pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day,
then just send them their blank application back!

If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on
anything you send them.

You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep
them guessing! It still costs them 44 cents.

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of
their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM
them. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail,
and best of all they're paying for it...Twice!

Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that
e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they
need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!

If enough people follow these tips, it will work. I have been doing
this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.