So having a business associated with my name and location seems to be the golden ticket for spam, email, phone, and mail. They scrape the forums, the site, and any info related to me and the business, including any other sites and posts.
This is making it so hard to decipher real from spam mail. They are full of real actual details, pitching services that are similar to things I use.
Currently, the only way I can quick sort spam anymore is multiple from the same sender or subject. Or they get me or another similar company mixed up and I can eliminate some of those without reading much.
So now email is getting more difficult and time-consuming to use, and now my phone is basically useless except for outgoing call or someone texting before they call, even with google spam detection, several get through every day.
Got a fedex letter I needed to sign for yesterday that had an ad in it for getting better google search ranking. A few months ago a package with a card in it, 4" screen and lipo, it contained a custom AI generated ad with my info in it try to sell me on using them for marketing.
How in the hell are we going to communicate in the future??? Maybe I need to look into some of the services that wipe your info…just need to find one that actually does it and also is not a scam.
I know not everyone can do this, but I have my android phone set to only allow calls through that are already in my phonebook. If you’re not in my phonebook, you get the automated assistant. That’s at least killed all the spam phone calls. People that really need to get me can get through the automated assistant.
Texts have been worse. Those still make it through quite regularly. Especially the political ones. I usually reply back, “I refuse to support anything that doesn’t follow the national do-not-call registry”, then I block the phone number.
I don’t have a response to the spam emails. The only thing I can provide for that is to use a different email address for each site you create an account on. Gmail allows you to use a suffix on the end of your normal email address. It doesn’t cut down on spam, but you know where the spam is coming from and who might have sold your information. I only recently learned about the suffix thing and started using it.
You can add a random suffix to your Gmail address by typing a plus sign (+) and any random word or numbers right before @gmail.com (e.g., myname+random123@gmail.com)
Gmail is the spam and reads all your information for training.
Get a provider that costs some money but doesn’t do that, in Germany for example posteo. I switched to it and am using it more and more, fading my old gmx address out.
The suffix does not help Ryan though because they are actively searching him out. My website somehow scrambles the mail-address so it can’t be scanned and is only human readable (don’t ask me how that works, but it seems to work), for other mails I now also use the “+whatever” addresses, so I at least know who leaked my data (if they don’t remove the +whatever automatically, pretty easy actually…).
Oh yeah, google requires a bunch of my actual info to be public, or they will not list v1 engineering in their search as a legitimate business. It makes it so hard. The official stuff I have to do through the US gov also requires this. They need to allow info hiding as domains do but they are just making a publicly searchable name, address, and phone number directory for spammers.
Anytime I have to update or pay any of my official stuff I get a flood of new spam as the database lists me as renewed and current. It is the most dumb system ever.
Perhaps we’ll walk to people’s houses and knock on the door. We’ll have to have a tin of cookies or sweets in the nearest room to the door that is always kept clean in case a random visitor shows up.
I get a lot of that too. I have my phone set to only allow people in my contacts and others get sent to an AI assistant. Most just hang up at that point. But the other day, someone actually said their name, so it rang me. As he was talking to me, the AI was anaylzing the call. It then started beeping and vibrating telling me “This script is commonly used for phishing calls”. I told them this was a scam and hung up.
No joke…last Thursday. knock knock…“Hi I would like to talk to you about solar for your home”…“um did you see the panels on the roof as you walked up??”, “oh sorry, perhaps you would like to talk about upgrading them” GTFO
Telling you my burnout to ads is at an all-time max.
My google maps and Waze all now show random food and gas stations on the maps as I am driving now.
I think I am developing an allergy or hypersensativity to them now. I am going to have to go to the dam jungle for an ad detox.
I have “no soliciting” signs up on my doors. I still get walk-up solicitors all the time. Some of the twisted logic they use… People’s lack of regard for one another is the underlying theme in all of this, online or not.
I have a camera on the front of the house. I also have 2 front doors with the second, outer one being glass. I keep both locked, but solicitors don’t know it.
If I check the camera and it’s not someone I know, I unlock and open the inner door and let the two Pyrenees jump on the back of the glass door. The last time they did it, the guy tripped on his own feet trying to back away from the door.
That’s been going on for years. Google has been featuring places that pay them prominently, so you see them even when zoomed out etc.
You should download organic maps, it’s based on openstreetmaps and is just great. No live traffic afaik, but hey, you don’t see ads everywhere because it’s open source.
I recently got cold contacted by two different “people” related to my work as an author, one claiming to represent a huge book reader club in UK, wanting to feature one of novels, and another claiming to an editor with a well known publishing company, and both were “long con” type approaches, and I am pretty sure both were AI. Dumped them quickly. It’s new level of spam for me.
Thanks for the tip, I didn’t know they split. The differences don’t read too drastically, I need to look up why they split after all. Comparing the two, OrganicMaps now gives me alternate routes, whereas CoMaps doesn’t (found a good article on German Organic Maps oder CoMaps: Welcher App können Sie trauen?).
(Sometimes you just don’t notice, simplemobiletools was also bought and is now milking it, there is a free version called Fossify still, which is the same thing but still free.)
