Saturday, February 11, 2012

Changing the Mail Guidelines for SonicGear

This is not that fascinating of a post but it's important.

TLDR:
Do not leave your mail subject line blank when you submit something to the site or it will get thrown out without being looked at, from now on.

The mail guideline for SonicGear item submission will be CHANGING in 1 way, as of like, now. The changes will be posted to the "mail guideline / how to" page too but this post is just here to elaborate / rant.

What is changing?
The "Subject Line" requirements. Ever since the start of that whole "virus that takes over your inbox and then spams ALL your address book people with trash & viruses forever" the Gear inbox has had well...lots of garbage in there. There's 2 reasons:

1. People don't know they have it. These things don't announce themselves, so unless a friend tells you, or you suddenly get a "Mailer Daemon / Mail Failure" notice to some defunct address you had in your book for BUY VIAGGGRAA that you know for a fact you didn't send...it just stays there spamming people.

2. People know they have it, but won't do anything about it.
This is mostly little kids. What they do  is abandon that email. So if they were SonicFan45@wherever.com they change to SonicFan46@wherever.com and just LEAVE the old address ACTIVE to spam all their old contacts forever with garbage. These things are scripts. They're viruses. They don't ever stop, or know that whatever has been abandoned. They'll send for eternity.

Philosophy: Well with this new address, that virus isn't MY problem anymore! Who cares about anyone else's mail box! Mine's new!

Yeah, well, people care. "Making a new address" doesn't stop that thing from tormenting everyone you ever had on your address book.

There's been something like this before, but now the retaliation measures are going to get serious. Before, I'd still open a few things if it "looked likely" but now EVERYTHING that looks shady (as per examples) is going right into the trash. There have been too many porn/spam/virus/password grabbers in these things to risk it any more.

Examples of what's going to get thrown out, according to what appears (or doesn't) in the email subject line.

Nothing in the subject line
RE: Re: re
Work from home!
My great day
Look at this
I'm better now
RE:
Did you try...
It's new
Look at this new

So it's totally incredibly easy to get the mail right. All you have to do is put in the subject line something about what exactly it is that you're sending in.

Found a new Sonic Tee at Sears
Is this Sonic plush fake?
Jazwares toyfair photo shows ___
Terrible holiday Sonic plush
Here's a new Sonic sticker set
Look at this prototype photo for the Jet the Hawk ___
I found my old Tails ____
FYE Sonic Items new for May 2012
There are a billion Sonic related / news related things that are so easy to put. Just don't leave it blank!

Mostly the people who ARE sending legit things all do this anyway. But about every other week, someone will forget to put something in the subject line. Those blanks? Are going to get thrown out from now on because the "mailbox takeover" virus creatures LOVE to use that to get people to open it.

Also VERY generic things like "Look at this new" I must mention because that's a really popular one for the viruses to send out. New......what? Of course you open in and bang: Rrroooowwlllexxx Replicazz! Or the very creature that took over the poor senders' inbox is in there. But people send this and then there's a genuine Sonic thing in there and it's like........50/50. Well, that sort won't be opened any more either.

So...if you've sent something recently, don't see it, never got a response, and aren't SURE you put something in the subject line, freely re-send it. It might have gotten thrown out.

This isn't the fault of anyone but the virus making fools. It's a hassle to have to do.

BAD Names!
If there's an email that sends zillions of these spams & is clearly abandoned, it's going to get black listed by the Gear mailer. No one reading this would have to worry about such a thing, I don't think.

A few 'bad apples' make it rough on everyone.