Dealing with spam.

[BootBoy]

There's always a thread here about dealing with spam, and plenty of advice about how to filter, sort and otherwise handle it.
Wouldn't it be better to not get it in the first place?

I rarely get spam, even though I have quite a large online presence and I thought I would share how I do it.


Get yourself a domain, I use Easily.co.uk, but there are plenty of others offering similar services and different pricing structures. I paid £9.99 for my .org domain for the first 2 years, I recently renewed it for £30 for the year.

With the domain, you get redirection of up to 20 addresses to your mail account. (I still use my NTL account for this).

A lot of spam addresses are harvested online, so you should be careful who you give your "real" address to.
The redirect system has an address for "unknown addresses", so set up the addresses you want:

me@mydomain.org = my@ntl
thewife@mydomain.org = thewife@ntl
another@mydomain.org = whoever@wherever


All other addresses are redirected to your default "unknown" address (in my case, my NTL address, the same as me@mydomain.org)

Here's the trick:
If you need to give an email address online and you don't really trust that it won't be put on a spam list, make one up. You usually need to receive this mail to get a password or similar. The address I used for this forum was nthell@mydomain.org, Because It's unknown to the redirect, it comes to me anyway.


If I start getting spam on that address, I just redirect it! sent it straight to abuse@nthell.

You never need to see the spam again, your primary address is protected, and you get to keep the same primary address as long as you have the domain, regardless of how many times you change ISP.

Everybody's happy!

[Chrysalis]

yeah I am thinking of doing something similiar myself, as I have my own email server and domain's.

[altis]

Here's another solution that can help when you need to supply a valid email address to sign up for something.

Create a temporary one using Mailinator and supply that address instead of your normal one. Then, when mail arrives at your Mailinator inbox, access it through the web interface.

Be careful because anyone who knows your address can read your mail but it's ideal as a one-shot email address.

[Matth]

Or NEVER release an address (except to trusted friends) that isn't a disposable alias - eg.
http://www.spamgourmet.com
http://www.spammotel.com

The Mailinator service is not much help if you need to send - but is great if you want a zero-commitment address to receive a one-time signup email - and remember the short retention - if you expect an email on Mailinator, you need to be checking every few hours, so it's no use for anything where they may legitimately want to contact you.

Spammotel lets you "lock out" an address if it's abused.
Spamgourmet lets you "charge" an address with a certain number of receives, recharge it, terminate it, or create/terminate an unlimited alias - Giving 3 messages allowed is probably enough to handle most single "transactions", without much leeway for abuse.

Originally Posted by Matth

Or NEVER release an address (except to trusted friends) that isn't a disposable alias - eg.
http://www.spamgourmet.com
http://www.spammotel.com

The Mailinator service is not much help if you need to send - but is great if you want a zero-commitment address to receive a one-time signup email - and remember the short retention - if you expect an email on Mailinator, you need to be checking every few hours, so it's no use for anything where they may legitimately want to contact you.

Spammotel lets you "lock out" an address if it's abused.
Spamgourmet lets you "charge" an address with a certain number of receives, recharge it, terminate it, or create/terminate an unlimited alias - Giving 3 messages allowed is probably enough to handle most single "transactions", without much leeway for abuse.

Or just use one designated addy for signing up online for everything.The spam will all go to that address and all you need do is read and keep relevant email and delete the rest.NEVER use any spam free addys to sign up to anything.Oh and never reply to spam and never try to unsubscribe.

Incog.

[dilli-theclaw]

I've not changed my email patterns or anything like that - but since I've changed to tiscali I've not had a single spam, not one.

The last time I checked my ntl emails (which I still can for some reason) - I had some 6,000 (that's 1 month's worth) - I deleted them all to free up the servers a bit

[Theodoric]

Originally Posted by Incognitas

Or just use one designated addy for signing up online for everything.The spam will all go to that address and all you need do is read and keep relevant email and delete the rest.NEVER use any spam free addys to sign up to anything.Oh and never reply to spam and never try to unsubscribe.

Incog.

Indeed. Exactly what I did recently. Set up a new, complicated primary address to give me a clean start and then took advantage of the 15 subsidiary addresses that ntl allow. I've now got an address for friends and relatives, an address for regular internet shopping, an address for one-off shopping, an address for banking and a number of junk addresses for signing up etc. As I quickly found out, even for your junk accounts, don't use addresses of the the type Bert99; the spammers will soon get hold of them.