ICO fines Flybe, Honda for breaking data rules. They were, um, trying to comply with GDPR

Spam is pretty easy to filter.

If you're not already refusing non-CLI phone calls and using your mobile's blocklist features (you do have a modern smartphone right?), then the number you get is pitiful. Get the apps that automatically looks up those "who's calling" lists for any number you don't already know.

And then you just blacklist anyone who gets through those measures and tell them why.

If the only way you can sell to me is to phone me up at random, without permission, on the off-chance that I might want to buy whatever-it-is, at that exact moment, from that exact company only, then you're really dead in the water anyway and there's no way I'd want to do business with you.

I have to say, HP resellers - and HP themselves - are doing this to me at the moment. I wouldn't mind but there's literally not a single piece of HP hardware or software anywhere on the site, and hasn't been for over a decade.

Bother me once, I'll take your details, make no promises, let you send to my work email.

Bother me again, within six months or a year, no problem.

Bother me more than that, blacklist. And I'll tell you why.

Yeah, it's "just one email to check in" but multiplied by every business in the UK that might want to do business with me, that's a ludicrous amount of unnecessary emails.

Personal users, there's no excuse. Unless I've literally signed something saying yes, the answer is no.

My landline doesn't get answered, it just goes to voicemail.

My phone doesn't get answered if I don't know who you are, it doesn't even HAVE voicemail.

Both are on TPS.

My email I can just click Spam and that's the end of it.

Bother me past that, and I'll just blacklist your company forever in both walks of life, personal and professional.

Any "spam" spam ends up filtered by gmail.

Anything else such as mailing lists you didn't sign up for can just be blocked.

"Block them - how?"

1. Get your own domain, or maybe an email provider who can provide you with your own subdomain.

2. Set up a separate alias/address for each firm you have to do business with such as your bank.

3. Every few weeks set up a new alias/address for one-off contacts and tear down the old one.

4. Each of these addresses gets directed to a single mailbox you you don't have to check all of them.

5. If any of these addresses leak you can tell which one. Be ruthless about tearing down the address because it isn't going to affect the rest of your email. If the correspondent gets in touch by some other means to complain make it an educational opportunity. Or change supplier.

6. It also helps to spot the fakes. If banking phishing mail doesn't come addressed to your banking email address it's immediately obvious even if they've hit the right bank name by accident.

This deals with most situations. There are exceptions. Amazon, for instance, seem to insist that communications from market place vendors go through themselves whilst others don't have that much wit. Paypal is one such. They pass the purchaser's email address to the vendor. Most don't spam but one or two do. What makes that particular situation doubly bad is that the email address is also the logon ID; that's right Paypal hand half the customer's login credentials to every vendor they buy from. Maybe there's an el Reg article in that?

At least it might arrive. Unlike my Flybe flight