

Show HN: my friday night project - F Junk Mail  - scottmotte
http://fjunkmail.com/

======
scottmotte
I despise junk mail and last night I decided to surrender to my emotions. I
built an emotional app that retaliates against junk mail. It is a usable
experiment in appealing to people's emotions and using an API for real world
interaction.

Introducting F Junk Mail! - <http://fjunkmail.com/>. It sends real world
postcards to junk mail senders. Currently, it has Charter listed. More
companies/addresses are on the way, but you can also enter your own address
in.

~~~
lancewiggs
I can't see a way for the offending company to fix the problem. A little
formality and the recipient email address on the card would add function to
fun. Something like "please remove name@example.com from all of your mailing
lists. All means anything you are associated with. Remove means I never want
to see your emails again. "

~~~
scottmotte
It is a good thought. For now people can do that by changing the text of the
message. I didn't want to require people to enter their private information.

------
ChuckMcM
I think this is a fabulous idea. Can you do me a favor? Can you make it so
that I can enter my name and address and then it will send a postcard to my
choice of 'congressional representative (state or federal)', senate
representative (state or federal), governor or president ? My experience is
that getting paper mail from people is more effective at communicating than
email, and knowing that someone paid $2 to send this comment is a clear sign
to a representative that the person really really means it. I would love you
long time if you could do that.

~~~
prasincs
That's a great idea. I think the act of sending paper mail feels rather
tedious to those accustomed to using emails, IMs often. People are more likely
to use a tool like this if it meant attention to issues. From the perspective
of the senators, seeing a stack of 10,000 paper letters is much more tangible
than say, 10,000 emails or petitions on a webpage. Now someone needs to make
it :)

~~~
scottmotte
Ok, to show how this might look, I've done the following:

<http://fjunkmail.com/?senators=true>

(it's hidden away unless you pass senators=true)

What do you think? Should something like this be on its own mini site? Ideas
for a name?

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is great! Probably put the name on the same line as the hello.

Possible site names could be 'stopbadpolicy.<whatever>' or 'tell-your-
congress-critter.com' or LetWashingtonKnow.com or even VoiceOfThePeople.com

Clearly .com or .org or most tlds would work.

As soon as its up I'll send another letter to my senators to ask them to force
the TSA to follow the law.

~~~
scottmotte
<https://postcongress.herokuapp.com/>

------
dchichkov
How about just registering at dmachoice.org or similar? Would save some energy
and recycled paper cycles...

------
BlackJack
I really like the site - good job! I think the cover page example should be
related to a Nigerian bank scam though - everyone recognizes those "A prince
passed away, you are 20th in line...collect your millions!" and I think it'd
be a lot funnier/relatable than Charter :)

~~~
scottmotte
haha, that would be funny but those are 'spam' based, right? I am targeting
real world 'junk' mail with this.

------
gmisra
Or you can use <https://www.paperkarma.com/> which is less passive-aggressive
and more free.

~~~
astrodust
It sounds more passive-aggressive to me.

------
scottmotte
So I just received my Saturday mail. Of the 3 items, 2 were junk mail.

<https://dl.dropbox.com/u/190299/junk-mail.JPG>

One is direct tv with a low trick of a $200 'prepaid card'. This is why I
really like companies like <http://simple.com>. If you guys haven't signed up
for simple definitely do. I've been really impressed.

Anyways, I think I will add direct tv on my list next for F Junk Mail.

------
DigitalSea
Really nice idea, nice work man. There's just one thing though that worries me
unless I misunderstand how it's all setup. But I noticed your popup where you
enter credit card details is being displayed on a non-https encrypted page.
Are credit card details safe to enter, are they encrypted in any way? I could
be wrong and you could be using something like Stripe or a 3rd party payment
API, I wanted to enter my credit card details to test it all out but was
worried.

~~~
scottmotte
Yes, I am using stripe via its stripe.js api so it is secure. (but if the
little app proves popular I will invest in using https or at the very least
piggy back on heroku's https)

~~~
melvinram
Even with Stripe, you should use SSL as per their info page:
<https://stripe.com/help/ssl>

~~~
scottmotte
Definitely agreed, but PCI-compliance wise I 'pass' with the current setup
going through stripe.js. But nonetheless, I agree it is a must have for any
legitimate site.

~~~
fatalerrorx3
I think most non-tech people wouldn't know that you were using stripe, and
would abandon the site at the point of sale (but I could be wrong). Me being a
tech person, I would still abandon the site after not seeing an SSL
connection, in my opinion it's not worth it to not have one

------
steeleduncan
Interesting idea. Out of curiosity - are you printing and mailing all these by
hand or is there some cunning automation there?

------
milesokeefe
"I think this is a fair price for the joy of retaliating against junk mail.
Plus, it costs me time and money to deliver these postcards."

What work is on your end? It appears that Sincerely prints/ships it, and the
$2 charge is to pay for that.

~~~
scottmotte
Fair question. That sentence is geared towards non-programmers (which is of
course an audience outside of Hacker News) Think of it this way:

Sincerely is an extension of me because I have to pay them 99 cents per
postcard so it is costing me 'time' (but in this case I am paying for that
'time' with money). Then on top of that I need to pay Stripe 36 cents to
collect. Same principle.

But maybe I need to come up with a better/more-convincing sentence there to
justify the $2. Additionally, if the idea actually catches on (it was just a
friday night project) then I'll put the effort into closing the margin and
finding a more affordable print/ship api.

~~~
milesokeefe
Ah, got it. I didn't realize strip takes that much, but it makes sense given
it's a small purchase.

I think it's better to charge $2 instead of ~$1.35.

The even 2 looks like less money at a glance, plus you get to keep some.

~~~
lancewiggs
It felt like a lot to me. $1.90 might be worth testing.

~~~
fomojola
$1.99, perhaps? There was a pricing article on HN a few days ago that pointed
out that the 99 cent thing really works, even if no one really seemed to have
pinned down why.

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sniperjoe
fire with fire? i like the post card art! two criticisms; the whole idea is a
bit hypocritical (sending more spam) and doesn't address the underlying issue
of spam mail. Have a place to sign up for a "do not spam" list on your website
and give users the option to "F JUNK MAIL" for $2.00. Also, I think you should
make the price $1 because sending a post card has a known price and it's quite
easy to do so offline. Why should they use your service and pay more?

~~~
scottmotte
I love the idea of a 'do not junk mail' list as part of the payment fee.
Anyone know of an api or form to submit someone's address to (with their
consent of course) in order to be added to a 'do not junk mail' list?

------
rane
Retaliate is misspelt in the subheader.

~~~
scottmotte
Thank you. Fixed.

------
niftylettuce
lots more of these sites can pop up with
<https://github.com/niftylettuce/node-sincerely>

