Grumble Thread

[Dave2002]

Junk email ..... Grrrrr!

I just cleared out over 10,000 junk emails - and I've still got way to go.

The problem is that I might want some of the emails from the senders, but not the continuous barrage which fills up my inbox, and takes me time to sort through and delete.

I am getting faster at deleting but even at 300 a minute it still takes time.

Another issue is the size of the emails. Not all emails are big, even though a modest number of small ones can still take up a lot of space.
If I could find a quick way to identify all the emails which were really taking up space that might help, though I recall I went round that loop some while ago.

[vinteuil]

... just had pushed thro' the letter box the following -

"What if 40% of your leaflets delivered by Royal Mail go into London's council estates? Find out what we can do for you - The Private Postman
Did you know Royal Mail Door to Door can only deliver to whole postal sectors including council houses. Case studies in eight postcodes (zones 1-6) show 40% of leaflets may be delivered to council houses when targeting London's middle and upper-class properties (ABC1). The Private Postman leaflet distribution excludes council houses by default. As a result, we achieve 98% hits on target for middle and upper-class London with minimal waste. Find out what we can do for you - The Private Postman, London's High End & Ethical Leaflet Distribution Co. (Formed by Ex Royal Mail Postman)"

This post is really intended specifically for Serial, to infuriate him and to validate his take on the world today : class war alive and well in Shepherd's Bush...

(The irony being that all the gentrified houses on the streets around here have notices by their letterboxes advising - "No junk mail - no advertisements - no callers")

[Old Grumpy]

* Invoices received as an image in the text of an email - these can be difficult to read on a phone if the image is not correctly sized on a phone screen.

* Large legal documents in an email which I only have a phone to read on (yes, we are in the middle of a series of conveyancing exchanges and have been away for a week)

[Dave2002]

* Invoices received as an image in the text of an email - these can be difficult to read on a phone if the image is not correctly sized on a phone screen.

* Large legal documents in an email which I only have a phone to read on (yes, we are in the middle of a series of conveyancing exchanges and have been away for a week)

"They" expect that if you're rich enough to be buying and selling houses you can afford a printer, a computer with a large screen etc, and of course they claim to be "saving the planet" by not having the decency to send you a printed paper copy.

Bit of a surprise really, as many in the "legal" profession are still acting as if they are in the 19th Century, but I suppose it's convenient to do a jump forward a couple of centuries if they can pass the toilsome effort back to the consumers - and charge them for it!

[french frank]

Junk email ..... Grrrrr!

I just cleared out over 10,000 junk emails - and I've still got way to go.

It might help to clear your junk/nbox regularly? Alternatively, why not just CRL+ A Delete? A thought: do you perhaps get 10,000 every day?

[french frank]

It might help to clear your junk/nbox regularly? Alternatively, why not just CRL+ A Delete? A thought: do you perhaps get 10,000 every day?

But then, I can't imagine why anyone would give up a computer/laptop in favour of just a phone. Phones are a pain, especially other people's...

[Petrushka]

It might help to clear your junk/nbox regularly? Alternatively, why not just CRL+ A Delete? A thought: do you perhaps get 10,000 every day?

I clear mine on a daily basis, often within seconds of getting them. If Dave has them all in a junk folder they can be cleared in one click of 'permanently delete' from the phone.

[Serial_Apologist]

... just had pushed thro' the letter box the following -

"What if 40% of your leaflets delivered by Royal Mail go into London's council estates? Find out what we can do for you - The Private Postman
Did you know Royal Mail Door to Door can only deliver to whole postal sectors including council houses. Case studies in eight postcodes (zones 1-6) show 40% of leaflets may be delivered to council houses when targeting London's middle and upper-class properties (ABC1). The Private Postman leaflet distribution excludes council houses by default. As a result, we achieve 98% hits on target for middle and upper-class London with minimal waste. Find out what we can do for you - The Private Postman, London's High End & Ethical Leaflet Distribution Co. (Formed by Ex Royal Mail Postman)"

This post is really intended specifically for Serial, to infuriate him and to validate his take on the world today : class war alive and well in Shepherd's Bush...

(The irony being that all the gentrified houses on the streets around here have notices by their letterboxes advising - "No junk mail - no advertisements - no callers")

What really gets my goat are TV ads advising landlords of suitable solicitors to help them get rid of "pesky" tenants. Admittedly there have been fewer of these commercials recently.

[Dave2002]

It might help to clear your junk/nbox regularly? Alternatively, why not just CRL+ A Delete? A thought: do you perhaps get 10,000 every day?

No - by regularly I'm guessing you mean on a daily basis. I'm not interesting in deleting just a few unwanted emails every day - although it's a pain doing it my way, Right now I can remove large numbers in a relatively short time. It's much more effective to be able to delete 50 or more in one fell swoop, even though that does take a few seconds.

No - I probably don't get 10,000 every day, but almost certainly around a hundred per day. The annoying thing is that most of them are of little value, but a small proportion are of interest.

I have changed the way I deal with email deletion, though it's hard to figure out the best way - as different tools may be needed.

Sometime just reducing the number is helpful, though what is often a big concern is identifying the emails which actually do take up a lot of backup memory space. If those are of interest or value it's worthwhile backing them off to a separate hard drive or SSD.

[Serial_Apologist]

No - by regularly I'm guessing you mean on a daily basis. I'm not interesting in deleting just a few unwanted emails every day - although it's a pain doing it my way, Right now I can remove large numbers in a relatively short time. It's much more effective to be able to delete 50 or more in one fell swoop, even though that does take a few seconds.

No - I probably don't get 10,000 every day, but almost certainly around a hundred per day. The annoying thing is that most of them are of little value, but a small proportion are of interest.

I have changed the way I deal with email deletion, though it's hard to figure out the best way - as different tools may be needed.

Sometime just reducing the number is helpful, though what is often a big concern is identifying the emails which actually do take up a lot of backup memory space. If those are of interest or value it's worthwhile backing them off to a separate hard drive or SSD.

It must be nice to know you're nice to know, Dave. I clear mine every first day of the month - any needing keeping go into "Archive".

[Dave2002]

It must be nice to know you're nice to know, Dave. I clear mine every first day of the month - any needing keeping go into "Archive".

I don't think so. Many of them come from companies which are hoping to entice me to buy more from them, or from organisations where I have expressed a slight - but genuine - interest - and then they pester me for a long while. This has been going on for years, but now it is getting ridiculous as such emails completely swamp the ones I do get from friends and others. I really don't need to know that company Z has an offer now for a product Y which I "can't do without", and the price will go up tomorrow - and that on a daily basis. Yet in a year's time that same company might actually have something I do want.

[Old Grumpy]

Does "unsubscribing" actually work or do senders just pause for a short period (to make you think they've ceased) and then just start again?

I find I can keep on top of unwanted emails by deleting them straight away each time I check emails. Must admit I do occasionally delete the occasional wanted email by mistake - they can be reinstated to the inbox though.

[Petrushka]

Does "unsubscribing" actually work or do senders just pause for a short period (to make you think they've ceased) and then just start again?

Must admit I can keep on top of unwanted emails by deleting them straight away each time I check emails. Must admit I do occasionally delete the occasional wanted email by mistake - they can be reinstated to the inbox though.

As far as I can recall any website to which I've 'unsubscribed hasn't bothered me again, but there have been very few of them and doubt if I'd remember them if they popped up again. I thought that there was a legal requirement for companies to abide by the customer's wishes in this respect but might be wrong.

[kernelbogey]

Why does my kitchen pedal-bin rotate slowly anti-clockwise during the course of the week between emptyings?

[Dave2002]

Many of the emails I don't want to delete immediately begin with "info@". I can review them later and do bulk deletion which is effective.

I'm not sure whether there are any other "conventions" used by the organisations which send out this stuff.
There's probably always going to be at least one [you wish, 100s - which won't] which will deliberately use another code so as to sneak past any user's defences.

Some people might want to just delete any such email as soon as it arrives - but the problem with that is that there might actually be something interesting, or important within it.
Often the hit rate for any email in this category really being of interest might be close to zero, with perhaps a 1 in 50 chance that there is a useful bit of information in the bundled set
However, later review might find a much higher rate of interesting email articles - that is perhaps unusual - but I have seen that happen.

Each email client is different, so methods which work with one client may not transfer to other systems.

For gmail perhaps asking a question such as this one

"in gmail in a web browser how can I select a large group of emails - say everyone which starts with "info@" and move all of them to a new folder?"

to an AI tool such as Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity might result in some useful suggestions as to how to automate the process of filtering and removing emails.

At least having a filter move all the temporarily unwanted [pending further consideration] to a separate folder can be helpful - though note that gmall uses a "label" approach rather than mailbox folders.

Another filter which might help some users might be one which moves any email with large file attatchments to a separate folder.