Joining Ad Mailing Lists by Force
The other day a friend of mine was telling me that someone complained to her that I was hard to contact and why don’t I plaster my email all over my social media channels. I tell her that if anyone needs to contact me, they can do so by using the Contact Us form on my blog, I am a blogger after all, but she still thought I was being unreasonable and what’s the worse that could happen by making people’s lives easier and just stating my email and phone number for the world to see.
Well, there are many reasons why I don’t post my email directly and why I prefer to keep my phone number private unless absolutely necessary. Lets start with the phone number, I don’t give it out unless I know the person personally or there is a delivery involved, yet I get an unreasonable amount of calls during my work time, or lunch time, or quality time with my family which is intrusive and I cannot answer nor am I obliged to answer any strange numbers for no reason. My phone number is personal and people who truly know me know that I loathe nothing more than talking on the phone so most of them leave messages for me.
However, there was an incident where a “PR” company got hold of my phone number and now keeps showering me with the worst ad whatsapp messages from the strangest numbers and I can block them all I want, they keep coming and coming. I’m seriously thinking of calling one of those ad places and asking them who your PR company is, then calling that company up and demanding they remove my phone number from their mailing list. Contacting me is fine, adding me to a mailing list without my consent or without the means to remove myself is a breach of my privacy and rights as a human being in my opinion.
Now we go on to emails, its not the smartest idea to get your adversities your email for the world to see, security wise, and I try my best to reply only to authentic looking people with genuine requests. However, again and again PR companies would take my email and subscribe me, against my will and without consulting me first, to their advertisements mailing list and keep emailing me their ads. Unsubscribe you say? I did! I swear I do unsubscribe, but I find myself subscribed again after I remove myself from their ad mailing list!
Dear contact, when I trust you with my email or phone number I wish you’d value that trust. Adding me to mailing and whatsapp lists by force, and re-adding me after I unsubscribe, is not professional at all and is actually quite annoying and the worst offenders are those who never actually contacted you before, they just magically acquired your email address and subscribed you right away. I wouldn’t be publishing this post if it was something that was happening once in a blue moon but sadly, as of 2014, I’m plagued daily by spam emails and whatsapp messages and I’ve had enough. Please, respectably, do not add my email to any ad mailing lists via email or whatsapp. I appreciate that you are only trying to do your job, but people would rather be added to ad lists by their own force of will and not be added by force and re-added when removing themselves. Thank you, much obliged indeed.
