I just finished my annual year-end inbox cleanup, and wow, was I irritated to discover how much “legal spam” there was. You know the stuff I mean—commercial e-mail from organizations I’ve done business with, but that I really never wanted. There were thousands and thousands of messages, literally: nearly 70 percent of the 7000+ messages I received that didn’t end up in Gmail’s Spam Folder before I even saw them.
Resolved: next year I’m going to be a lot more aggressive about unsubscribing from most things and deleting everything else after a quick look-see. If you’re sending me e-mail I didn’t explicitly opt in to, you’d better be sending me cash—a lot of cash—or your message is history.