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Love the Monty Python bit, hate the junk that shows up in my mailbox...
I've been having a lot of conversations with people about SPAM recently. It's gotten to be such an epidemic. I have a sort of "spam vendetta" going, and have a few things that I do to fight spam.
In my personal mailbox, I only get about 1 piece of spam per week, so I guess it's working pretty well. (I attribute that one piece to some residue left over from before I started seriously trying to ward off spammers). I thought maybe it was worth passing along my "Anti-Spam" tips.
MY BIGGEST, MOST STEADFAST RULE THESE DAYS IS TO NEVER EVER POST MY REAL ADDRESS ANYWHERE ON THE WEB!
I only give my real email address to friends and relatives.
1. On my newsreader for newsgroup postings, my return address is shown as [email protected]. If someone gleans that address and sends anything to it, they get a nice little note bounced back to them... Go ahead and send some mail to it and see. Anyone can use the address. (go to www.privacy.net to check it out)
2. In the sig line of my newsgroup postings is an address that really will get the mail to me, but its through www.despammed.com which is a forwarding service that filters spam. After it has gone through despamming, it shows up in my OE mailbox.
3. I have my email program set to show only the www.despammed.com address in any email I send out.
4. I also use the [email protected] address for sites I have to register for when I'm sure I won't ever want to receive mail from them but they require an email addy to register or get info. This also cuts all of the opt out caca
5. For places I register where I might actually want to receive something from them and need to use a good address, but don't want it showing up in my OE mailbox or am afraid they will sell my addy or have a bunch of opt out stuff, I have a Hotmail address. It mostly collects Spam, but I check through it about once a week or so to see if there's anything legit there and delete the spam that has amassed.
6. For those very infrequent pesky things that do leak through all of that, I have my email filters set to send certain words and phrases directly to my trash bin.
7. I use Mail Washer, which I really like. It lets you bounce mail so that it looks the spammer has reached a bad address.
To Protect My Friend's (and other people's) addresses, I do these things:
8. When sending mail to multiple recipients, I use the BCC function instead of the To or CC function. BCC is Blind Carbon Copy. This keeps the addresses of the people I'm sending to from showing up in anyone else's mail, and helps protect my friends from having their addresses passed around willy nilly through endless forwards to people they do not know.
9. I either cut and paste items I'm forwarding or remove any addresses that remain showing.
10. I don't send e-cards, and I ask people who send them to me to use my Hotmail address. I have this feeling that those e-card places are seriously guilty of doing unsavory things with all of those addresses they're collecting!
It sounds like a lot, but it's really easy to do and it cuts the crap WAAAAYYYYY down.
Anyone else got any cool tricks for foiling those nasty spammers??
I've been having a lot of conversations with people about SPAM recently. It's gotten to be such an epidemic. I have a sort of "spam vendetta" going, and have a few things that I do to fight spam.
In my personal mailbox, I only get about 1 piece of spam per week, so I guess it's working pretty well. (I attribute that one piece to some residue left over from before I started seriously trying to ward off spammers). I thought maybe it was worth passing along my "Anti-Spam" tips.
MY BIGGEST, MOST STEADFAST RULE THESE DAYS IS TO NEVER EVER POST MY REAL ADDRESS ANYWHERE ON THE WEB!
I only give my real email address to friends and relatives.
1. On my newsreader for newsgroup postings, my return address is shown as [email protected]. If someone gleans that address and sends anything to it, they get a nice little note bounced back to them... Go ahead and send some mail to it and see. Anyone can use the address. (go to www.privacy.net to check it out)
2. In the sig line of my newsgroup postings is an address that really will get the mail to me, but its through www.despammed.com which is a forwarding service that filters spam. After it has gone through despamming, it shows up in my OE mailbox.
3. I have my email program set to show only the www.despammed.com address in any email I send out.
4. I also use the [email protected] address for sites I have to register for when I'm sure I won't ever want to receive mail from them but they require an email addy to register or get info. This also cuts all of the opt out caca
5. For places I register where I might actually want to receive something from them and need to use a good address, but don't want it showing up in my OE mailbox or am afraid they will sell my addy or have a bunch of opt out stuff, I have a Hotmail address. It mostly collects Spam, but I check through it about once a week or so to see if there's anything legit there and delete the spam that has amassed.
6. For those very infrequent pesky things that do leak through all of that, I have my email filters set to send certain words and phrases directly to my trash bin.
7. I use Mail Washer, which I really like. It lets you bounce mail so that it looks the spammer has reached a bad address.
To Protect My Friend's (and other people's) addresses, I do these things:
8. When sending mail to multiple recipients, I use the BCC function instead of the To or CC function. BCC is Blind Carbon Copy. This keeps the addresses of the people I'm sending to from showing up in anyone else's mail, and helps protect my friends from having their addresses passed around willy nilly through endless forwards to people they do not know.
9. I either cut and paste items I'm forwarding or remove any addresses that remain showing.
10. I don't send e-cards, and I ask people who send them to me to use my Hotmail address. I have this feeling that those e-card places are seriously guilty of doing unsavory things with all of those addresses they're collecting!
It sounds like a lot, but it's really easy to do and it cuts the crap WAAAAYYYYY down.
Anyone else got any cool tricks for foiling those nasty spammers??
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