Charles de Gaulle, when he was President of France, has been quoted as saying when he didn't return or answer phone calls, "If I wanted to talk to him, I would have called him." No, I'm not going that far, but I can see his point. In today's environment of constant overload of calls, scams, and advertising, trying to answer or even view all the information that is thrown at you is at best a harassing experience which has very few benefits. However, you can't just ignore some of these situations because if you do, unauthorized charges will follow, or if you just happen to get an offer that looks to good to be true -- it probably is -- and if you bite the hook is going to pull money directly from your bank account.
Last night Vertis waved her iPad. "Look at this, Richard! This email says I have won a 52-inch TV at Walmart! All I have to do is send them fifteen dollars for shipping!"
Well, Vertis is no dumb blond, and she was laughing at the scam, but just multiply that by a thousand and you can get a feel for how technology overload is disrupting our lives. Of course we know how to delete, but just passing through all the junk on my email, Twitter, Facebook, and other internet offers is mostly a worthless waste of my time. Yes, I put up with it, because occasionally a friend or business acquaintance will actually send me something of interest, but is it really worth the hassle of literally hundreds of emails just to get one morsel of worthwhile information? I guess it is, because the solution is worse than the problem.
Where do we go from here? It seems, as we see toddlers in kindergarten looking at their cell phones, that one day we're going to have an internet crash of technology overload. Why? Because the vast amount of worthless internet offerings will be so overwhelming that the reverse will finally take place, and folks will stop internet shopping because their daily email will have so many new and such a vast number of salutations, not to mention hundreds of scams. Today, it's almost mandatory that when you order something, you must give your email, and "bingo" that automatically puts you on their promotions lists to get literally hundreds of emails, which clog up your computer. Naturally, the item you ordered is picked up by scanners, and look alike offers add to the flood of emails.
Ordering online is a hassle, but it's not just sharing your email, but something even worse -- your credit card info. In our business office, we have had to stop authorization on several credit card accounts. Yes, some of them were hacks, but most of them were repeat charges. You order some face soap, and it comes in, and you are happy, but then in a few weeks another shipment comes in, and a few weeks after that another .....and another....and another. Yes, you complain and say you didn't authorize multiple shipments, but as you dig deeper you are sometimes told that since you didn't check some little box, which said this was a single purchase, you were put on a once-a-month shipment charged to your credit card, and the one item you ordered keeps coming and coming and coming, and your credit card keeps getting it again and again and again and again. After going over several other business accounts, we determined there we too many questionable charges, and although they weren't for large amounts the cumulative dollars were significant. That's when we suspended the credit card and ordered a completely new card number. Yes, after seeing a positive drop in unauthorized charges I'm going to regularly switch credit card numbers, and it will be somewhat of an inconvenience, but it seems that is the only way to stop further scamming.
I've found out by accident that constant info of nearly everything isn't worth the effort. I have had a stock retirement account at Merrill Lynch for a number of years, but after a hacking they suspended my internet view of the account. After several attempts to correct the error, I gave up, and since this is a retirement account, a monthly statement is fine. The same type hacking error shut down my Facebook account, and after wasting several hours trying to reauthorize the account, I gave up, and I could care less. Yep, my Twitter bit the dust a few months back, and I'm not about to try Threads. However, my email is valid, and I do read and try to answer all emails that are about my column.
Yes, I still have an email, and as I mentioned earlier giving out your account automatically puts it on a sometimes-multiple daily email solicitations, and trying to unsubscribe is tough, and some of the accounts just keep coming after you have unsubscribed, or they tell you it may take 10 days to get it done. It seems to be a "tough row to hoe" as my grandmother used to say. In other words, if you want to have the convenience of arm-chair shopping, you must be alert to scams, double charges, and outright bank account theft, if you shop on the internet. Yes, I still do, but I really wish our stuck-in-the-mudslinging congress would take up internet scams and put some teeth into stopping it.
I learned several years back that there are no free lunches, and all the solicitations have hooks, and those hooks are directly tied to pulling money from your billfold via the Internet. No, I'm not going to toss my cell phone, but I did just cancel two more credit cards and ordered new ones.