Stop Junk Mail Article Discussion 17 September 2008 at 11:52AM edited 14 June 2010 at 4:04PM in Praise, vent & warnings 108 replies 45K views

Former_MSE_Wendy

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Stop Junk Mail article

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superscaper

I've posted this quite a few times but to get zero spam emails without using any spam filters I do the following:

"I set up about 300-400 email addresses on my domain forwarding to a central address. Of those 300-400 unique email addresses I gave to different companies etc I currently get zero spam without any filters. When in the past I started receiving some phishing emails I could delete the entire email address and not use it any more. It also told me specifically which company passed my details on by which address they were sent to."

So every time I give an address to a company it is unique ([EMAIL="amazon@mydomain.co.uk"][email protected][/EMAIL] etc). I give a personal address only to people I know personally and are friends and family. That one may possibly attract some spam but nothing like just giving out one address to anywhere. It was pointed out previously that setting up 300+ email forwarders over time is time consuming but I'd argue that it's only an extra minute or two when you fill in a form on a website and compared to the time endless spam filtering and checking spam folders in case it caught genuine mail takes I think my method is far more time saving (and so ultimately money saving). And the idea of looking through spam folders in case of false positives seems to me to defeat much of the purpose of spam filtering. Hence why I'd rather use a method that required no spam filtering.

MothballsWallet

But what about spam WAP service messages on your mobile? No one seems to be in charge of these? I've had 4 in the last year (not a lot you might think, but this could be just the beginning), and they're a pain to deal with.

I know who owns the domain that they claim to be sent from, so I will be contacting them about it. So far, I've only ever received pornographic garbage from these people, and I want to know how can they get my mobile's details to send me a WAP service message when I hardly use the internet from my moby anyway??!! and

superscaper

MothballsWallet wrote: »

But what about spam WAP service messages on your mobile? No one seems to be in charge of these?

It's still the Information Commissioner's Office. http://www.ico.gov.uk/

gropinginthedark

Superscaper's approach doesn't address one problem:
"I give a personal address only to people I know personally and are friends and family."
What if one of those gets a trojan on his PC that broadcasts their email contact list. It happens. Someone I know with an obscure email address (very unlikely to be "guessed") just got 14,000 junk mails over the weekend because her or one of her correspondents has a compromised PC.

My approach is this: I give out an email address that includes month and year (e.g. [email protected]) and tell people to change the date as necessary. I put these instructions in my email footer/signature.
I keep monitoring the mail from previous months reminding correspondents of the change and close any address that start to get spammed.

superscaper

gropinginthedark wrote: »

Superscaper's approach doesn't address one problem:
"I give a personal address only to people I know personally and are friends and family."
What if one of those gets a trojan on his PC that broadcasts their email contact list. It happens. Someone I know with an obscure email address (very unlikely to be "guessed") just got 14,000 junk mails over the weekend because her or one of her correspondents has a compromised PC.

I did actually say it may attract spam in the very next sentence "That one may possibly attract some spam but nothing like just giving out one address to anywhere." I don't claim it to be a perfect system but I think limiting it to only one address I think is reasonable enough and I'm hardly stuck with it as I can merely change it if it ever did become unmanageable (which it hasn't after many many years of use).

You must have some amenable friends and family because most of the people I know wouldn't bother continually changing their contact addresses every year never mind every month. Even my own mum only just recently updated my email address (the one I've had for several years) in her contact book.

gropinginthedark

superscaper wrote: »

I did actually say it may attract spam in the very next sentence "That one may possibly attract some spam but nothing like just giving out one address to anywhere."

Yes but you started by saying "...but to get zero spam emails without using any spam filters I do the following...".
My friend just got 14,000 spams in a weekend because her "friends and family" address got compromised (over 100MB in her inbox).
Yes some people do struggle with the concept of a monthly-changing email address but by keeping the old ones running for a while I can spot the offenders. I actually put an autoresponder on after a few months so they get a bounce with a helpful message. I'd still not claim to get to zero spam but very few make it.

...most of the people I know wouldn't bother continually changing their contact addresses every year never mind every month...

They'll get used to it, an estimated 50% of email addresses are dropped in the first 2 years of use. (Not only due to excess spam but also job and college accounts that end when the owner moves on or ISP accounts that end when the customer changes provider).

superscaper

gropinginthedark wrote: »

Yes but you started by saying "...but to get zero spam emails without using any spam filters I do the following...".

Which is a factual statement. You can't dispute something that's just a fact.

Also you seem to be completely ignoring what I actually said about what I do with email addresses ever were to get spam.

DCFC79

You both have good ideas on dealing with spam, ive got 1 yahoo uk email address which has 8 filters setup and as such all of my spam i get is sent to my spam folder plus 1 or 2 a week which arent spam,

TEAMTRADER

It should be illegal to forge an IP address but the responsibiltyl falls to the ISP. Perhaps ISP registration is necessary to start controlling this area!
THEN WE SHOULD SEE THE END OF SPAM!!!!

linuxsapien

Essentially, there are many ways we can deal with the issue here.. Personally, here is what I do.. For personal/business emails, I use a catch-all facility of my email service. so say I email ebay, then id use the address ebay @ mydomain.co.uk. So anything that comes from them will be identified, and if i start to get spam from the address, then I block that one address. (Its their own fault if they let spiders steal addresses from their site, and we know it happens ALOT). For when I sign up for forums, etc, I use a magical service with add-on, courtesy of Trashmail. It lets me set up unlimited forwarding addresses that I can use on forms, forums, sign ups, whatnot. These addresses have options for you to use, like letting the address expire within any time range, or letting you get say only 2 mails to the address, then it expires. Other than that, all i need is, use googles email service, it has phenomenal success at sorting out junk. So good it is, I use google apps with my own domain. I hope this helps you people.