I regret…
I don’t collect regrets. There are a few exceptions, however, and they deal with the privacy of my contact information.
I regret posting to a mailing list that, by the way, did NOT post its “if you do this it will be on the site forever, no exceptions… so here are your options…” disclaimer the first two times I posted, and left my email address open for harvesting. I regret posting to it again under my other email address.
Most of all, I regret not paying $2 to have my phone number and address made private when I got my telephone number. I didn’t want to pay $2 and figured if people need to contact me… well, I’m getting spam mail from a couple banks, which is easy enough to thwart with some effort, and it ticks me off but at least I can fix it. Today I got one that said “Clinical Research Trial” or something, with no street address, from NEW YORK, US postage paid. Inside was something about hot flashes medication and a phone number to call. (Thanks, maybe I’ll do so in 30 years.) At the bottom there was a message that made my heart sink: the contact information was obtained from publicly available lists.
Damnit.
There’s my regret again. See, I never got any spam until I moved out and got my own number, under MY name, and made it available to the directory, which is actually available on a bunch of websites. (So I know it’s not my bank selling information.) I figure, when I move, this will all blow over BUT will all the ensuing junk mail then show up for my landlords to contend with? They get enough addressed to the previous owner and tenants, some of which isn’t even junk. Will they forward it to me so I’ll get it anyway?
So I had my listing removed from Whitepages.ca and Whitepages.com.
Does unsolicited mail tick off anyone else?