Spammy marketers don't want you to know this one weird trick!
January 29, 2022 9:54 AM
Where to find practical "spam" email subscriptions that will teach how to avoid scams?
I've been helping an older relative with going through some back email. I've noticed that they have a great deal of subscriptions to the sort of thing that while technically not spam (there are legit unsubscribe links) send lots of health related info along the lines of "find out about this one mineral that will cure this thing" or "this exercise will cure your condition in 3 minutes a day", "cancer cell kill code" etc. Some of these, they have over 100 emails from the same sender so far this year! I'm unsubscribing them from many of these.
But the seem to very much enjoy reading content of this sort!!! They often read out loud to themselves when scanning subject lines and will talk to themselves about how they want to know how to do that and click through. Their actual important business email would take them 15 minutes to keep up with but they are so engaged with these types of things that they will read for 2 or 3 hours at a time. I am unsubscribing them from some of these things because I keep getting asked to spend my own time helping with issues they could solve themselves if they weren't buried in this garbage. (perhaps this is technically unethical, as they insist that they enjoy reading these, but they seem to be harming themselves and others who depend on them with their level of engagement, and even starting to argue with doctors treating another household members serious medical issue, and they did ask for my help with email...)
(I'm trying to avoid stereotyping older people as less tech savvy, my relative has their own website and is tech savvy in other ways. Because they are older, most of this material they are reading is targeted at health issues of older people and the marketers are probably most skilled at targeting with wording that appeals to older generations, etc. I'm sure there are similar email newsletters targeting different generations -- relative also subscribes to a lot of business success lists that are similar in some ways, but I'm leaving them on most of those because they seem less harmful than the health related ones)
Meanwhile, they have fallen for a couple of scams. The phone call saying there is something wrong with your computer. Not-quite scams like the trial subscription to the miracle vitamin, paying $99 for lifetime access to being on an email list that will try to sell you miracle vitamins, etc.
Since they find this content so engaging, I would like to replace some of these subscriptions with similarly worded content from legit sources that want to protect vulnerable people from scams etc. I'm imagining subject lines like "5 signs a scammer is targeting you", "the secret to spotting email tricks", "phone tricks people trying to cheat you out of money don't want you to know" -- I'm not good at writing this garbage so I don't think those would quite hit the same buttons, but you get the idea. Maybe there are some government agencies (I'm in the US) that would have email lists like this, or maybe some sort of charitable organization aimed at helping consumers. Hell, even a reasonably legitimate organization using email lists to advertise some sort of service that would help avoid scams.
Where can I find email lists like this to subscribe them to?
(There is also a lot of straight up spam about winning an ipad, etc, but that is a different issue. They are on aol so don't have the best spam filtering)
I've been helping an older relative with going through some back email. I've noticed that they have a great deal of subscriptions to the sort of thing that while technically not spam (there are legit unsubscribe links) send lots of health related info along the lines of "find out about this one mineral that will cure this thing" or "this exercise will cure your condition in 3 minutes a day", "cancer cell kill code" etc. Some of these, they have over 100 emails from the same sender so far this year! I'm unsubscribing them from many of these.
But the seem to very much enjoy reading content of this sort!!! They often read out loud to themselves when scanning subject lines and will talk to themselves about how they want to know how to do that and click through. Their actual important business email would take them 15 minutes to keep up with but they are so engaged with these types of things that they will read for 2 or 3 hours at a time. I am unsubscribing them from some of these things because I keep getting asked to spend my own time helping with issues they could solve themselves if they weren't buried in this garbage. (perhaps this is technically unethical, as they insist that they enjoy reading these, but they seem to be harming themselves and others who depend on them with their level of engagement, and even starting to argue with doctors treating another household members serious medical issue, and they did ask for my help with email...)
(I'm trying to avoid stereotyping older people as less tech savvy, my relative has their own website and is tech savvy in other ways. Because they are older, most of this material they are reading is targeted at health issues of older people and the marketers are probably most skilled at targeting with wording that appeals to older generations, etc. I'm sure there are similar email newsletters targeting different generations -- relative also subscribes to a lot of business success lists that are similar in some ways, but I'm leaving them on most of those because they seem less harmful than the health related ones)
Meanwhile, they have fallen for a couple of scams. The phone call saying there is something wrong with your computer. Not-quite scams like the trial subscription to the miracle vitamin, paying $99 for lifetime access to being on an email list that will try to sell you miracle vitamins, etc.
Since they find this content so engaging, I would like to replace some of these subscriptions with similarly worded content from legit sources that want to protect vulnerable people from scams etc. I'm imagining subject lines like "5 signs a scammer is targeting you", "the secret to spotting email tricks", "phone tricks people trying to cheat you out of money don't want you to know" -- I'm not good at writing this garbage so I don't think those would quite hit the same buttons, but you get the idea. Maybe there are some government agencies (I'm in the US) that would have email lists like this, or maybe some sort of charitable organization aimed at helping consumers. Hell, even a reasonably legitimate organization using email lists to advertise some sort of service that would help avoid scams.
Where can I find email lists like this to subscribe them to?
(There is also a lot of straight up spam about winning an ipad, etc, but that is a different issue. They are on aol so don't have the best spam filtering)
Maybe get them Maria Konnikova's "The Confidence Game"? It's not focused on emails, but it may help them recognize the characteristic features of cons and scams.
posted by sindark at 11:08 AM on January 29, 2022
posted by sindark at 11:08 AM on January 29, 2022
I've never subscribed to their emails, but Snopes has a newsletter and I'd imagine that since they're talking about this very problem, a lot of the subject lines are similarly compelling.
posted by teremala at 11:24 AM on January 29, 2022
posted by teremala at 11:24 AM on January 29, 2022
Kreb on Security has a newsletter. but his newsletter may be a bit more high-level or technical than your average scam-spotting tips.
posted by kschang at 9:58 AM on January 30, 2022
posted by kschang at 9:58 AM on January 30, 2022
FWIW, you should be able to add AOL mail to the gmail interface, so you get gmail spam filtering on the AOL stuff... As long as they remember to use the Gmail interface.
https://support.google.com/mail/thread/51025898/how-can-i-add-my-aol-address-to-google-mail-so-i-get-aol-mail-when-i-pull-up-gmail?hl=en
posted by kschang at 10:01 AM on January 30, 2022
https://support.google.com/mail/thread/51025898/how-can-i-add-my-aol-address-to-google-mail-so-i-get-aol-mail-when-i-pull-up-gmail?hl=en
posted by kschang at 10:01 AM on January 30, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by amanda at 10:19 AM on January 29, 2022