It seems to be happening more and more. I get emails sent either through my contact page or emailed directly to me that are extremely misguided. Often to the point where you question if they would give you their credit card number, social security number, or proof of a sacrificed first born if you just replied and asked for it. We aren’t talking about spam, but questions that really have no purpose being directed towards me, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why someone would pick me.
I’ve tried with the “emails about _____ will be ignored” warnings on the contact page, but they were ignored, so to make the page cleaner I just removed it. Apparently people who do this are so misdirected, that didn’t help ;-).
Among the more memorable ones:
- Account/Invite Requests – This is the most popular. They typically want an account on: Orkut, Reporter, Gmail, something about ‘Mozilla Email Service’ or something like that once or twice a few years ago. Are there plans to compete with Gmail that I haven’t heard about? Even The Venice Project (which I can’t confirm or deny any sneak peak, much less share if I did).
- It’s Broken – I answer if it’s related to code that I wrote (extension, website, etc.). If it’s a “Firefox doesn’t work” I always point to mozillaZine forums for this (since those forums do a pretty good job), can’t login to some random site including online banking or their work email, or some other site. Requests about lost passwords? Yup.
- He’s picking on me – How to get revenge? I got one of these before too.
- Can you help me make… – Typically a request for me to do all the work (for free) behind someones moronic business idea. Like I don’t have enough things I want to do for myself.
- Angry Mail – These are the ones where people feel that if your online, it’s your legally binding obligation is to be their digital slave. Not even a simple request, but a demand or threat, often either abrasive or just outright offensive in nature.
There are others, but not quite as memorable. 9/10 that fall into the above categories are just ignored and deleted with no reply. After all, why even get them started. Some people do get worse than me, so I really can’t complain too much.
A few months ago I was getting some serious spam, but since I rewrote the system to include several anti-spam defenses, that’s been remedied. That of course doesn’t solve this.
It doesn’t bother me to much (it’s not like it’s flooding my email), but just one of those silly things you have to deal with. I understand the Firefox related questions on occasion, or things related to work I’ve done. But much of it is so off target it’s funny.
I do wonder if there is a better way to handle it.