Q & A of the Week: Blocking Cell Phone Spam

Posted in: Gadgets, Q & A

Question: Dear Erin, You recently wrote about how to send text messages to cell phones from a computer. I’m hoping you can help with something kind of related that I’m experiencing. It’s cell phone spam and I don’t have any clue how to stop it so I was wondering if there’s a cell phone spam blocker or something like that I can use or maybe some other tool like that out there? Please help!!!!!!!!! — Cindy (from Dillon, Colorado)

Answer: I actually experienced the same problem of too much cell phone text spam myself at one point, so I understand your frustration. Cell phone spam is even worse than email spam because you can’t just install a spam-blocker into your phone *and* you have to pay when you receive the spam! Booooooo.

Instead of rewriting the explanation of how you can go about decreasing the amount of spam you receive on your cell phone, I’m going to recommend you have a look at this great post in the New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/5cauyq. This should help a ton. Good luck!

Email Tip of the Week: Unsend! Unsend!! Unsend!!!

Posted in: Email

Surely you’ve experienced something along the lines of this before? You’re sitting at your computer, type-type-typing away. You finish up the email you’re writing and tap the Send button in your email program–only to experience an instant, horrible, all-encompassing sensation of dread. In the fraction of the second it’s taken your finger to begin lifting off your left mouse button – the very mouse button you clicked to depress the “Send” button on your screen – your brain starts shooting off massive red fireworks because SOMETHING IS WRONG.

You sent the email to the wrong David. You forgot to remove the notes from the top of the email. You accidentally cc’d that explicit, horrible, dirty video to your ailing grandmother. You attached your tax-return form instead of your resume and sent it to your potential employer. You sent the lengthy, venting, smack-talking email about Sarah …. to Sarah.

What you wouldn’t give to go back in time – even just a few seconds back – so you could unsend that email and make the growing pit in your stomach disappear. Well, as you may have guessed by now, there *is* a way. This particular solution doesn’t work after a long delay, and it’s specifically for gmail users, but I have a hunch it just might be the type of functionality that could really make someone’s day.

In Gmail Labs under Settings, just turn on “Undo Send” and you’ll then see an Undo link on every sent email confirmation. Click “Undo” while the send request is processing or within 5 seconds of the email being sent through and Gmail will reopen the email for editing without sending it off to its intended (or potentially unintended) recipient(s).