Do you ever change your e-mail address?

[JCKC]

Does anyone ever change their e-mail address to combat spam? It seems like even with the best spam filters, after so long, your e-mail in-box gets flooded with crap on a daily basis.

I'm just wondering if it's worth it killing an existing e-mail address and replacing it with a new one every so often.

 

[Jeff7]

My dad has already changed his address once.
Best practice: prevention.
How bad can spam get?
The Jeff7.com domain received 555MB of mail traffic in the past 30 days. A few months ago, it got a rash of nearly 4GB in just 3 weeks. I don't know if there was a worm going around or what.
At any rate, I have a catchall set up - if e-mail doesn't go to a legitimate username at my domain, the catchall gets it. And then it deletes it. Hundreds of messages a day, probably into the thousands even, many of them are duplicates.

Now, prevention:
If your e-mail address is visible to a person, it's visible to crawler programs that scour the Internet looking for e-mail addresses. Don't leave your e-mail address visible. If you want to post it online, use an image - I have an image on my website with the address on it, with a wavy background on it (in the event that spammers ever put image recognition software to use). And if you code a webpage, and the coding has a mailto: tag in it, with your address, it's visible to the crawlers.

One other possible way of getting yourself on spam lists - if a website with some cute/stupid animation, or something like that, has a link on the page that says "Send this page to someone you know," when you type in that e-mail address, you might be giving that address to spammers. So make try to make sure that no one sends you links that way. If they want to send you links, have them do it manually, by copying and pasting the address into the e-mail program.

 

[Mitzi]

I suppose it really depends on who provides your email service. FWIW Gmail does a great job of filtering out spam...might be worth considering.

 

[JCKC]

Are 'invitations' still required in order to get a gmail account set up?

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: JCKC
Are 'invitations' still required in order to get a gmail account set up?

yes, but i have about 200 to give out.. and i'm sure there are plenty of others too

 

[imported_LoKe]

I have never gotten spam in my inbox with Gmail.

 

[Bonesdad]

I RARELY get spam on my standard email account. I only email family and friends with this account. I use a hotmail account for all web purchases and everytime a website asks for my email address. I have the benefit of family and friends not sending idiotic jokes to everyone they know 50 tmes per week too! If I start to get joke spam or "cute story" spam from anyone, I send them email asking them not to and if they continue, they get blocked.

 

[spherrod]

I just use a hotmail account for anything I'm not sure of - I only give my main email to people I know and trust

 

[mezrah]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: JCKC
Are 'invitations' still required in order to get a gmail account set up?

yes, but i have about 200 to give out.. and i'm sure there are plenty of others too

Not true...you can sign up using if you have a mobile phone

 

[microAmp]

I have one email address for friends and family (main acct.). I tell them not to sign me up for e-cards, crap, etc.

Other email do various specific stuff, but have a spam email address too. Use that email address to sign up for whatever is on the web.

Overall, I would say it's been good to me. Though now my main acct. does receive about 2-3 spam daily.

 

[deepred98]

i have at least ten accounts cuz i keep forgetting the passwords

 

[rh71]

I've had Hotmail since day one and earlier they used to be bombarded with spam but their filtering has gotten a lot better... through all these years I've managed to stick with them... primarily because I have some important emails started through there and I'm not going to make them change. I also use Yahoo and Gmail for the same reasons... I really gotta stop signing up for the next best thing. I also have my own domain email but I keep it for domain-related stuff only.

 

[Nothinman]

I'm on a handful of mailing lists so my address is out there in a lot of archives, hell googling for my name returns messages to lkml, debian-alpha and debian-sparc. Infact only 1 entry on the first page is for a different person with the same name. But I run my own mailserver setup using some RBLs and SpamAssassin, that catches 99% of all the spam that I and the lists I'm on receive. I do still receive a few here and there, but not anywhere near enough to consider changing my address or domain.

 

[oboeguy]

Did it once, leaving my HoTMaiL account to rot when it got past the point that clearing it once a day wasn't enough to keep it from going over the pathetic 2MB of mail limit of the era. Not since, though.