Posted on 02/29/2004 7:15:24 AM PST by pabianice
True enough but it seems to have reduced the spam I receive.
Another tactic I use is a free Sneakemail account.
When I must leave an email address online I use a randomly generated Sneakemail address.
Sneakemail adds 1 hop to the path before it gets to my ISPs server or my PC. Sneakemail allows me to create a nametag for that address so I can identify the place I used that address on, such as, "Staples Rebate Submission".
When that particular Sneakemail address starts getting spam sent to it, I simply go to Sneakemail.com, log in and delete that particular address. (After I get my rebate of course.)
Works like a charm. Heck, even the email address I have to leave for places like FR sign up is a Sneakemail address.
I had to disconnect my fax machine and only plug it in when someone has arranged in advance to send a fax.
The junk faxers are violating the law. FTC or FCC just fined a notorious junk faxer (think it was Fax.com) several hundred thousand dollars or more.
Go to www.junkfax.com for more info.
No, don't do that! You're just adding to the problem.
The reply addresses for both spam and e-mail viruses are virtually always bogus. You're just sending unsolicited e-mail, aka spam, to somebody who had nothing to do with the mail you received.
The idiots who built these bounce options into their spam filters have made the spam problem significantly worse. Bounces to forged addresses constitute some substantial portion of the spam out there. The same goes for viruses and the ill-conceived bounce functionality in some virus filters.
A side benefit has been a spam filtering service that I have slowly ratched up from it's 10 levels to near level 1 to 2 now (have to check) since I have learned to trust it so explicitly.
At the same time I have been sending my spam to SPAMCOP, a great blacklist service (among others). I just discovered (as needled on from this thread) that my great POBOX.com service is now tied to SPAMCOP and a lot of other black list services (Spamhaus, MailPolice, Not Just Another Bogus List, etc.), as well as other outright blocking abilities (e.g. don't send me anything from Nigeria, etc.)
It has greatly expanded it's spam prevention services so I have just turned it all on. And all for $15 a year, for three 'logical' addresses pointed at one physical. More logicals are available at 3 for $7.
I have been shopping all sorts of tools but now that my existing tool has just been upgraded tremendously, I am quite hopeful that I will have the best of all worlds with POBOX.com.
Hmmm .. that last line about "my existing tool" sounds like I have been reading too much of the spam that HAS gotten through!! ;-)
Good tip. I shall cease and desist forthwith.
LOL!
I bought a domain name (my last name) and have the emails directed to my REAL email account (a local ISP). True, it does cost me another $15/year but it give me a practically _infinite_ number of email addresses to use: one for family, one for friends, there's a jcpenney@{name}.com, sears@[name].com, and so forth.
Part of the redirection service is the ability to have a list of locked-out names. If I start getting pornography addressed to, say, acme@[name].com then I'll lock out 'acme' (and email acme themselves to change the email they use to acme1, or something, if I still want to receive emails from them). My kill list has about 15 names on it at the moment - one or two are companies that I still want to get email from (sales, discounts etc.) and the other names were SOLD by the companies to spammers.
There's a counter associated with every blocked name and I can see how many emails have been refused (the sender gets a reply saying "name does not exist". It's also possible to have a list of 'accepted only' names and have everything else blocked.
The best thing about having your own domain name (you don't have to be a guru - it's surprisingly simple to set it up) is that if/when I decide to drop my current ISP and move to another, I can send all my mail there and STILL keep my domain name (so I don't have to notify everyone-and-his-brother when I change ISP's). You can 'split' your emails too: say you're going on vacation. You can receive the email on your home account and forward a copy of it to a temporary web-based emailer that you can reach from anywhere. And even more stuff. Consider purchasing your own domain name to avoid junk emails. I think it's money well spent. (No, I don't represent a domain name service or provider.) Feel free to Freep-mail me if you have questions.
For the really obscene stuff, or the Nigerian scams, I have forwarded to postmaster@their ISP with a notice warning. .... I have gotten "thank you, we have deleted their account" messages back from the ISP.
Spam that contains any feature that can be identified as an attempt to bypass spam filtering (forged headers, word garblings, random text attachments, etc) ought to be punished under the existing computer cracking laws.
Follow the money. It would be trivially easy to trace checks or credit cards drawn on special accounts set up for this purpose by law enforcement (and, no, it's not "entrapment" if the spammer takes the first step of soliciting the transaction).
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