harassment by unwelcome advertisement 

The legal name for the "moderate misdemeanor"-level crime of causing someone to be deluged with junk mail. Often performed by a disgruntled acquaintance of said individual as a way of getting even with the person for a perceived wrongdoing, and usually accomplished by "anonymously" contacting multitudes of businesses/organizations by phone/fax/email and/or responding to paper/internet junk-mail ads that you yourself receive by filling out the advertisers' response-forms in your victim's name, so that he will soon begin receiving tons of useless crap in his mailbox and/or e-mail account, receiving innumerable telemarketing/sales-calls, getting loads of junk-faxes (which of course will create the added headache/expense of his having to buy more paper and ink for his machine from its dutifully printing out all those useless ads!), having salespeople knocking at his door at all hours, etc.

Another sometimes-effective/successful use for harassment by unwelcome advertisement is to pressure the "targeted" person to do something you want (think, the hilariously-infamous "Taliban Hotline" animated cartoon); extra points if you also choose the types of advertisers --- and your method of sending the ad-responses --- strategically, so as to inflict maximum discomfort/humiliation on your victim, such as requesting info/offers from controversial and/or "spicy" organizations like the KKK or "adult" product/literature producers, and sending some of the requests via post card instead of discretely-concealing envelopes, so that every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the postal system is made shockingly aware that this person is apparently interested in these questionable/controversial services.

harassment by unwelcome advertisement by QuacksO August 19, 2018