Just wondering if anyone else has been getting spammed w/ JUNK EMAILS since applying. Are med schools selling our email address lists? It was so bad this weekend--I'm so pissed off! Just since Friday, I've received @ 10 weird emails that are blank or w/ only a few lines of text & that take up @ lot of space (more than 100K). I can't turn on the Junk Mail Filter b/c then some of the med school emails don't get through. Anyone have any tips? The only thing I'm doing now is to individually block each message, but they're coming from different addresses. I'm drowning in junk!!!! Help!!
btw, i have received no spam at all on my med school email; i don't think amcas is selling them at all. If you have a hotmail, yahoo, or other free account, these are typically spammed often. Most spam comes from when you register your email address with other commercial services, typically online.
ok, so here's a sure-fire way of solving your problem-- try and see if you can get yourself Microsoft Outlook. It's not an email program, it's.....a way you can consolidate your email addresses and have them be downloaded in the same place. Once you get Outlook, add your hotmail account to outlook and get your mail downloaded there. Then, once you start getting emails from junk people, all you have to do is add each sender to the junk list. All your emails therefore get downloaded to the junk folder (from those specific senders). And then every few days, you can just delete all the files from the junk folder. It's a bit of a lengthy process, but I know it works.
Argh...Hotmail is the worst. Even if you never give your email address on Hotmail to anyone, since Microsoft sells names, you'll get spam. It's ridiculous! It's such a scam. And then the spam fills up your mailbox, so they want you to get their pay service. -RA
On a side note...I always thought one of the funny things about hotmail address is that you often can't give the first one you ever created to med schools. Why is that? Because for some people, it's something like [email protected], since you can put anything you want. -RA
Actually...funny story... So one of my suitemates frosh year was pledging to be in a frat. And for one of the pledge activities, they had to watch this porn called Houston 620. It's where the porn star Houston has sex with 620 guys in about 10 hours. So they had to do interesting things like keeping inventory (e.g. # of old bald guys, # of black haired guys, etc.). And they also had to eat rotten yogurt, well...when you can guess what happened. Well, my suitemate is watching this movie, and all of a sudden a guy that looked a lot like me comes (so to speak) up for his turn. Both my suitemate and one of his friends are like, "oh my god! It's [RA]!!!!" That was an inside joke (so to speak) for the rest of the year... -RA
RA, What an innovative way to finance med school applications!! Thanks for your feedback, everybody. I've thought of a way to strike back--I'm going to find some scary foto off the internet that takes up tons of space, save all the addresses of my spammers, then send out this mass emailing to all of them. Actually, I've been doing that w/ junk mail, whenever I get them w/ postage-paid envelopes, I stuff everything into it & send it back. Not only did they pay to send it to me, they also have to pay for getting it back & disposing of it!! Haha!
Well something has to pay the bills. And I do the postage-paid thing too. I figure if they're going to send me junk mail, I might as well send it back to them to see how they like it. Of course, I always remove all identifying evidence that it was me. -RA
Nefertari, do not--I repeat DO NOT--ever reply to a junk e-mail. All it does is confirm that the address is a good one, and ensures that it will get sold to even more spammers. I have Earthlink's Spaminator, which collects all my junk e-mail. It doesn't even reach my mailbox, so don't even see it, and I don't have to dispose of it. Earthlink automatically disposes of it after 10 days.
I have a few 'not this year buddy' letters that have been showing up on my doorstep! I consider those junk mail... Maybe I'll make a collage of them and post a picture!
my boyfriend and i both have hotmail and have been getting more junk mail in the last few weeks. he's not applying to med school, so it's just a hotmail thing i guess. one of these days i'm going to have to switch over to yahoo since they allow you 4x more storage than hotmail.
you guys are going to hate my for saying this, but I use hotmail as an SDN email account and I have NEVER had a single junk mail sent to me on that account. I don't know what i did that was right....perhaps I unchecked all the check marks when I first got the email box. i am not sure. But aside from one email a month from those Hotmail Services people, I don't get any other junk mail. Hope I didn't jinx myself.
Wow...you're the luckiest Hotmail user alive. I too uncheck everything, and it just doesn't help. I've never publicized one of mine anywhere, and it's still full of spam. Stupid hotmail... -RA
I believe you can do the same thing with Outlook Express, which comes with Windows and can be downloaded for free (for Macs too). BUT, this tactic is usually pretty ineffective, IMO, since spammers tend to swtich email addresses often. How hard is it to switch your address from [email protected] to [email protected]. A slightly better method is to block out the entire domain (spammer.com), but then you really shut out a large number of people who may have a legitimate reason to email you. One other thing: if you want a really nice web-based email service, check out www.myrealbox.com.
i've gotten tons more surface mail since applying... lots o' podiatry schools, especially. and some odd/unknown ones like jewish universities in israel (i'm nowhere near jewish) and of course, ross medical. i created a new email account (yahoo) for med school app stuff ONLY and have only used it for med school app stuff, and yet *still* have gotten spam in it. but yahoo has a good bulk mail/spamguard thing set up, so none of it actually goes to my inbox, just to bulk/junk mail folders. tweetie, you must have appeased the correct spam dieties in order to be released from the clutches of "low mortgage rate" and "increase your penis size" email glory.
Hey Adcadet & other email-savvy peeps, Have you had any problems using this service to receive amcas/med school emails? Thanks.
What a coincidence to have this bumped up today! My story has to do with regular postal mail instead of email, but, well, the message is the same. After months of not having any med school related junk mail, I opened my mailbox today with anticipation, as I'm waiting for housing info from my med school. There was a big envelope in the box! I got all excited... only to find that the mail is from Harvard. It was some advertisement for their women's health magazine! Talk about tacky. Big H, just because I applied to your med school doesn't mean I want to be your pen pal. I wonder if I have to APPLY to be eligible to receive their prestigious women's health magazine.
