How to handle this?

If anyone has any bright ideas on how to handle this, I'd really appreciate it.

I'm not very close with my mother for reasons I won't go into here. However, we email back and forth once in a while and occasionally chat on the phone. Her father and stepmother (Clarence and Clara) live in California and are elderly (well duh, but it's a factor in the issue). I met them once when I was a very small child and that was it.

My mother gave my email address to Clarence. About this time last year, I began receiving tons of forwarded emails, most of them with AARP jokes and elderly people jokes and also some patriotic things. Quite a few chain letter emails. It was at the point where I was receiving 10 or more a day. Now, I have a cable modem, and a private ISP, and I don't get spam emails. Except from my grandfather.

I would like to have a relationship with Clarence and Clara, so I didn't want to yell about the emails, because really it's just a few clicks to delete them. I sent an email asking politely if they could please take me off of their forward list, because I don't care to receive the emails, but I would like to hear about what's going on in their lives, the trips they're taking, etc. I just don't want the lame jokes and stupid dog photographs and such.

They never responded to that email, and the forwards kept coming. I emailed again with much the same tone, politely asking them to take me off of their list, but to please keep emailing me with the occasional "how are we doing" update.

I started getting postcards from Clarence that he'd "love to hear from" me and how I'm doing, etc. Now, I'd already included how my life is going in one of the emails, but I guess he doesn't ever READ the emails that he gets, he just forwards them to everyone? I'm not really sure. He's old and he's just not getting how the whole email thing works. I wouldn't be surprised if someone helped him set up his forwarding mailing list and he has no idea how to take someone off, so he's ignoring my requests.

I then started having a virus problem with my email. Since I don't get spam junk email from anyone except him, I think he's been forwarding some hinky email (because if he doesn't know how to remove someone from a mailing list, he certainly doesn't know how to scan an outgoing email for viruses).

Also my computers are on 24-7, and I use my email for work purposes as well. I have a very small house. It's very frustrating to be woken up in the middle of the night by the email noise blipping time after time after time because he's forwarding 10-12 emails to me. I tried turning down the volume on the computer before going to bed, but then I forget to turn it back up and miss emails because I didn't hear the notification noise.

So, reluctantly, I started filtering my email so that anything from him goes directly to my deleted items folder, and I empty it periodically. I emailed them again and explained that I was deleting the junk and would appreciate it if they would stop forwarding it, so that I would only get their personal emails; otherwise, if I have to delete everything, I might miss the personal emails. No response.

This was working fine until one day I noticed one of his "How we're doing" emails went to deleted items, and I said "Crap! I'll miss the actual emails about their life that I don't want to miss." I emailed him AGAIN, explaining that I didn't want to miss those types of emails, but I don't want the spam, so could he please only send me the personal emails. Around this time I also started receiving this "Country" magazine in the mail (apparently my mother gave him my home address also), which isn't really my cup of tea, but I sent him a nice "thank you" card for the subscription (even if I pitch the mag when I get it), and in the card I again mentioned that I love to get the personal emails but not the spam.

I didn't receive any response to these requests.

Today my sister emailed me to tell me that he'd sent us an email asking if we like the "Country" magazine and whether we want our subscriptions renewed. She emails me whenever he sends a personal email, she forwards it to me so I get to read it and don't miss it because it went to my deleted items folder. Apparently he accidentally sent it twice and in the second email he said "Don't freak out because I sent it twice."

I've decided I'm not going to respond to the email, but I also don't want him (who is on an elderly man's budget) to pay for a subscription I don't use. I asked my sister to put my answer ("Thanks for thinking of me, but I don't need a subscription renewal") in her reply to him, but it's not really fair to keep her in the middle.

I don't really know what else to do. The man is very nice but I don't know him that well and he apparently thinks I "freak out" about things - I can only assume he calls asking him to stop forwarding me spam as "freaking out."

This is just a vent really but if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them. I don't want to block him completely from emailing me but at this point I'm not reading his emails anyway.

I think I'm going to send him a snail-mail thank-you card telling him I like the magazine but I don't want him to spend his money on a subscription, and remind him again that I don't receive his emails so would he please take me off the list. Don't really know what else to do.