My mother forwarded me an email the other day about how hotmail users are having all their personal information disseminated all over the web, and how there are all sorts of precautions you should take to prevent this from happening to you.

I haven't opened it yet, because that seems like a lot of trouble.

The only reason I know the contents of the email is because she previewed them for me on the phone. We were having a conversation about how she and my father are being stalked by shifts of telemarketers who bombard the house day and night with calls to the point where she and my father have both stopped answering the phone at all. They let the machine pick it up, and you have to leave a message--"MOOOM!!! IT'S MEEEE!!! PICK UUUUP!!!"--loudly enough to be heard in all parts of the house because they won't even go stand by the machine any more to see who it is.

My suggestion being that maybe she should start picking the phone up and telling the solicitors to 'take me off the list'. It works. I swear. I'm not even polite about it anymore. It's practically the first thing I say when I answer my phone.

The point being that she countered with her own suggestion of how to avoid getting junk mail (thus the whole eventual email connection). Apparently some lady eliminated all junk mail from her life in six weeks by taking the time to write "Thank you. Not interested." on all the credit card applications, etc. that she was being sent. The junk mail people have to pay postage to receive this missive back, and apparently they conclude that you aren't worth the bother and take you off their list.

I'm tempted to start doing this. It beats my previous strategy of shredding crap mail. If by 'shredding' you mean 'tearing in half and playing the odds that some bum won't steal my personal information from the trash and spice my life up with a little identity theft scandal'.