Here’s the problem: I don’t have time to contact every company I’ve never heard of who sends me spam (or mailshots as you call them). I’m sure you can imagine how quickly this does not scale since you get paid to send these emails out to people, but nobody pays me for my time to deal with them. And of course there are thousands of people like you and only one of me.

Unfortunately, this is the problem with Opt-Out lists. I didn’t ask to be put on it and now you expect me to make the effort to be taken off. This makes things really convenient for you, but very painful for me.

On the other hand, editing my blog is easy, quick and doesn’t require me to navigate phone trees, track down the one person in a company who is responsible for this sorta thing or reply to spam begging to be taken off the list risking that I’ll just get even more spam because now I’ve confirmed my email address is read by a real human being.

And posting email addresses on my blog hopefully gives legit companies an incentive to change their Opt-Out list policy by either giving them a small taste of what it feels like or by public humiliation. It’s not ideal by any means, but I believe it will be more effective in the long term.

I’ve no idea how you might have gotten onto the list if you’ve had no dealings with us, but still, talk to us and we’ll resolve whatever problems you have with us.

>>I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but the Ticketmaster fees you have on your tickets is an outrage. I just tried to buy six tickets for a game at your website, but when I saw the nearly-$10 fee PER TICKET on top of an already hefty ticket price, I decided not to buy. Such an unconscionable and usurious (not to mention just plain ridiculous) fee not only turns customers away, it also tarnishes the Sharks brand. I now feel that the Sharks organization is not one that cares to deliver a fair value to its customers; rather, it is an organization that will rip as much money out of my wallet as they legally can, justified or not. It’s a damn shame to treat your fans this way and make them feel negatively about an team they support. And though I’m sure your party line is “It’s not us! It’s those mean guys at Ticketmaster!”, the suggestion that the Sharks have no way of preventing the shafting of their customers like this is not credible in any way. Please fire Ticketmaster at your earliest convenience if you care about your fans.<<

Furthermore, I don’t click those “unsubscribe” links since many of those only serve to validate your email address with the spammer and only will increase the amount of spam you will receive.

“cab*” will match “cabernet” and “cabfranc”.

As for privacy… Obviously companies are afraid of secrets getting leaked. One of these days someone will be able to explain to me this concern people have with publishing their IP addresses… do people really think this matters? Between DNS, BGP, whois and good ol’ traceroute, people need to realize that IP addresses aren’t private.

But clearly there is information in the packet payloads which is confidential like emails, passwords, documents on SMB/NFS shares, etc. Honestly, I don’t have a good answer for this- other then hopefully you can find people with QA/Test labs who are willing to upload captures of these networks because they don’t contain any confidential information.