Ask HN: Why are web services still emailing me? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are web services still emailing me?

1 pointiamdave1 comment

I am a member of various job boards, mainly from when I was out of work (somewhat employed now as a consultant for Samsung).

What I don't understand is that nearly all of these job boards, and plenty of other services I have signed up to have all been sending me emails despite the fact that I explicitly checked "Do not send me updates or emails from the team", or "Do not send email results, I will login and check for new jobs".

My question to web service developers:

Why do you do this? I genuinely miss getting emails from actual people, and it's somewhat shocking now that I treat an email from a human being the same way I treat a handwritten letter from my best friend in D.C. because it seems they're becoming a rarity.

At least outside of the office environment.

This sounds like you have two questions:

Why are web services emailing you when you have explicitly asked them not to?

I do not know the answer to this, but have noticed it as well. Normally, I receive an email for a service when I signed up for an account several months ago. Despite the fact that I unchecked the email notification box, they have assumed that my absence made it okay for them to contact me. Whenever it happens, I become more likely to either delete my account or blacklist the entire domain in my mailserver.

Why don't actual people at web services send me personalized emails?

I would be concerned if a job search website sent me a personalized email that included job recommendations.

Humor aside, I am tired of websites sending me faux-personalized messages that are really attempts at getting me to buy things. Better was the email from Derek Sivers sent to my CD Baby email address (about various projects he was working on). It ended with:

"Please let me know what's going on with you (really!), in case I can help in any way, and to keep this from being a one-sided conversation."

It seemed like he cared less about getting me to click on the earlier links, and more about actually caring about the people he sent the messages to.

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