So how come...

[johnridley]

Why do people put lines at the bottoms of their emails saying what device they sent their messages from? Is there some reason I need to know, or are they just bragging about their new toys? I've been seeing "sent from my Blackberry" for a while, just now I saw "Sent from my iPad."

This message was sent from my Windows XP box, service pack 3, FireFox 3.6.8. Just in case you needed to know that.

Comments

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

Why do people put lines at the bottoms of their emails saying what device they sent their messages from?

It is not something that we, the user, have any control over. It's an automatic thing (at least on my Blackberry on Verizon).

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

So, more like you're being forced to distribute advertising.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

I guess you could look at it that way.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I also don't like the idea that anything gets attached to my messages that I don't control. I consider mails from me to represent me. These aren't horrible. There are some that are - it really bugs me when people are using some kind of free email service and it puts multiple sentence advertisements after every one of their emails.

[tlunquist.livejournal.com]

"Free" email service isn't. Ads on the bottom of your email are your payment.

iPhones let you change the sig line pretty easily. I haven't bothered, but I'm of the school that appreciates knowing a message came from a handheld vs. a full keyboard device when it is terse and misspelled. This information tells me a long reply, or a correction of the garbled language, is probably not appropriate (and that it may be time to just call or text that person's cell phone vs. attempting further email interaction).

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

We're not talking about free email here. Not at all. We're talking about mobile devices.

Even in the context of free email, GMail doesn't do this crap. OK, they're feeding me context-based ads (or they would be if I weren't blocking them). And it's possible they're aggregating data to sell, but I think it'd be silly to think everyone else isn't doing that as well.

I suppose that as an excuse for not taking the time to put together a proper response, the mobile device sigs are somewhat sensible. But really, what I would prefer would be that people wait a few hours or a day until they're back at a real computer. I don't think I've ever gotten an email with one of these sigs on it that couldn't wait for a day. My experience has been that people who answer emails quickly on mobile devices usually don't do a very good job; they didn't read the question, or they give answers so terse as to be useless and require a follow-up email anyway.

[tlunquist.livejournal.com]

I was referring specifically to " it really bugs me when people are using some kind of free email service and it puts multiple sentence advertisements after every one of their emails," although your point about GMail is valid. I agree that mobile device email is not free and thus should not involve non-optional advertising. My iPhone doesn't require that I tell the world I've sent email from it. I don't really mind doing so and haven't bothered to change the .sig, but now that I know it's causing serious stress in your life, I'll make a point... of never sending you email from my iPhone. ;-)

What if I *like* my iPhone and derive a sort of perverse pleasure from being a member of the iPhone club? Am I within my rights to choose to trumpet my iPhone's existence to sundry recipients of my email, or are so many people losing sleep over this that it is my duty as a geek to spare them that eyeball-searing "Brand Moment"?*

*I trust you can tell that I write this with tongue firmly in cheek, but this footnote just in case the "sarcasm font" doesn't display properly

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

That's alright. Outside of work, spam and the mailing lists I belong to, I don't think I get more than 5 or 6 emails a month from everyone in the world combined (and those are people looking for information or reminding me of a meeting or something), so it's not a big deal.

I think the REASON it bugs me when free email providers do this is that GMail doesn't do it.

"This message was typed on an actual computer. Any typos are because I screwed up, any terseness is because I just don't care."

:)

[jon787.livejournal.com]

Thats how I look at it, but my mom (who has a Verizon Wireless BlackBerry, as it reminds me everytime she emails me) views it differently. In her eyes, its a note that she didn't use a real keyboard and a request to excuse any typos.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

That was always my assumption. Not that people put it on, but that they at best didn't know how to disable it, or, at worst and most likely, couldn't disable it.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

It might be under your control. There are instructions

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I thought that I recalled someone that I mentioned this to going in and disabling it. He didn't realize it was happening, and went in and turned it off when he found out. But it had been a while and I couldn't recall exactly.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

These instructions are older, but look easier. Other message implied that they may not work anymore though.

1. Select Messages.
2. Select Options.
3. Select Email Settings.
4. Set Use Auto Signature to No.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

No "Auto Signature" option on mine.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

I guess we'll just have to put up with the spam then. On life's annoyance list, it's pretty far down. The political screed sigs are much worse.

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

I can think of a couple of reasons that this is done, at least by default.

Of course first - and I fear foremost - is to advertise the device to the people receiving the e-mail.

But there is also the issue that when e-mail is sent from a mobile device it is often less feature full (i.e. plain-text) then when sent from a more powerful client. Most mobile clients will send only plain-text e-mail to save on bandwidth.

Of course since I'm a curmudgeon who still believes that e-mail should be plain-text, it doesn't make a lick of difference how *I* send (non-work related) e-mail out.

(I did run a quick test. At least from the gmail client I use on my Android phone, no extra signature is added. But I think one of the non-gmail clients I used before giving up and moving my primary e-mail to gmail for mobile reasons did)

[billroper]

I know I can change the signature on my iPod. The problem is that it only allows me one signature for all of the e-mail addresses that I'm reading from, so using their default ended up as appropriate as anything. It also lets people know why I'm being less verbose than usual. :)

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

What he said. Don't hate me just because I fell for an apple.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Don't hate me just because I fell for an apple.

You're not the first woman to use that line.

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

You fall for apples? Excellent insight, see you soon --

[jennlk]

While I suspect in most cases it's just advertising (and not all providers make it as easy to turn off as Apple does), I've got my sig set to "virtual keypad, pardon my typos" as typos are easier to make and harder to catch and fix. It's also harder to interleave responses, or to include links if necessary. (have you tried using gmail on a handheld device?)

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

Gmail on the iPhone is AWFUL.

[jennlk]

yep -- email in general is iffy at best, and web-based email is practically unusable. (LJ and FB are mostly usable, but email? icky, icky, icky.)

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

I've never had trouble on my Android, and it does not add junk to my emails as it routes them through my regular, non-gmail outbound account.

[jennlk]

Amy and I were specifically talking about the iPod, and it's not trouble as in "doesn't work right or at all" but trouble as in "ye ghods it's hard to navigate these web-pages-pretending-to-be-mailreaders".

(Realise that the only reason I've got anything at all is that SR got a 16G iPod Touch for graduation, and I got her old 8G. I use it mostly for music and games, but have been known to do FB and LJ on it, especially when DB is using my computer for homework.... I suspect that if I were to actually use the iPod for email, I'd use the email app, not the web-based mailboxes. That would probably work better. :))

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... About the only person I get "sent from my BB" footers from is my boss, and I actually appreciate that. It means that she's neither at home nor at the office, so I shouldn't waste my time trying to find her at either place.