E-mail H3ll

[MamaMootz]

OK, so ...

I signed up for an alumni website from high school. Someone from my class found me on there and e-mails me. Every day. Multiple times. Wants to talk to me every day about blase things. Sends me chain letters. Is driving me nuts.

Now I don't want to hurt this person's feelings, but I don't have the time or inclination to read 10,000,000 chain letters a day plus correspond 10 times about how wet the ground is in Podunk, WA. My email does not have a block feature, which is a darn shame because I'd have added this person to it by now.

How to politely stop the emails... ignore? Is there a good way to tell this person to cease and desist? I also haven't seen this person in well over 20 years. And we weren't that close in high school, either.

[Clara Bow]

Ignore, and delete them unopened. Some people's email accounts allow them to see if their emails are getting opened or not, If hers has this function and she sees that you're dumping them she may get the point. You might also consider adding her to your spam list so the emails get shunted to the spam folder and you don't have to deal with them.

[Brentwood]

I agree with Auntie Venom's suggestions.

Also - set up a secondary email account (a free one like Yahoo or Hotmail). Go onto the alumni site and change your email address to that one. That way, if and when someone else starts emailing you, it will go to that address instead of your main, regular email address. Any spam from the alumni site will also go to the secondary email. If it's one of the two websites I'm thinking of, you'll get a lot of spam from them.

[Lisbeth]

Can you block this person's E-mail address on your computer?

[emeraldsage85]

I wonder if this person is lonely and has no one to talk to?

[supernova]

"Oh dear!  I'm so sorry, but I've been asked to let all my friends know that company policy says I'm no longer allowed to receive personal emails at work.  I'll be starting a Yahoo! account for my personal email just as soon as I have time, and I'll let you know what it is soon.

Thanks for understanding!"

Doesn't matter if the addy she has isn't your work email... 

     - saphie

[Belle]

I had that problem. Ignoring didn't work, and I didn't want to block the person entirely because they did occasionally send a "real" e-mail. I finally sent them a polite e-mail explaining that I loved to hear from them. Unfortunately, I had very limited storage space in my e-mail account, so it would really help me if they would leave me off of the address list for the chain e-mails, jokes, etc. because the e-mails were using up my storage space and preventing me from receiving other e-mails. It worked.

Nowadays, I don't know if that excuse would work, as most e-mail accounts have huge amounts of storage (even the free ones). But you might use a slightly different excuse in a similar manner. Example:

"Dear highschoolbuddie,

I'm so glad that we were able to find each other using the alumni website. It's been great to hear from you and learn what you've been up to!

Unfortunately, I don't get a chance to check my e-mail very often, which means that the e-mails can pile up quite a bit before I get a chance to read them. Because it can take me a pretty long time to get through all of the e-mails, I've been asking my friends to exclude my address from any mass e-mails or chain letters. It would really help me to get through the rest of my e-mails more quickly.

So, did I tell you how my significant other was abducted by aliens the other day? Oh, it was such a hoot! [continue on with some blah blah blah story about your life to show that you're still interested in hearing from him/her, even if you don't want his/her junk e-mails]

Sincerely,
MamaMootz"