Ever since realestate.com.au added a "join" and "sign in" requirement to their advertising website, inquiries about "Riverbend" have totally dried up. Of course, the "join" and "sign in" requirement was always meant to weed out spam emails. If it now also weeds out frivolous inquiries, so much the better! I mean, anyone who can't be bothered to make that extra effort to find out more about an advertised property can't be really interested, right?
Of course, realestate.com.au is only the latest of the many websites that now require your personal information before they allow you to proceed. Most of them want to get your email address so that they can bombard you with more and more unsolicited emails later on, or what's now known as spam. Incidentally, the internet meaning of spam appears to have derived from a sketch by the British ‘Monty Python’ comedy group, set in a cafe in which every item on the menu includes spam. My humble apologies to you, Des, since, of course, you already knew that!
I have my own way of dealing with spam. Whenever I am asked to give out my email address to be added to someone's mailing list, I go, "Yep, no problem! Hit me up at idontcheckthisaccount@sorryaboutthat.com".
