I'm tired of Email spam what to do?

[fyleow]

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[gopunk]

actually, there is an easier (and probably cheaper way). i use spamex.com, which gives you something like a thousand "discardable" email addresses to use at any given time. so i'll have something like gopunk.anandtech@spamex.com for this site. it costs 10 bucks a year, but i'm pretty sure there are other services like this that are free.

the way spamex works is any email sent to that address will get bounced to whatever address i choose (with a little header saying it was sent via spamex). the reply-to is set to a garbly address that spamex uses for replies. it will get through just fine though. also, you can use spamex's tool to send emails via a web interface from the address of your choosing.

 

[fyleow]

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[gopunk]

Originally posted by: fyleow
gopunk that looks interesting. It needs another email address though to forward to and my hotmail is spammed. I don't see how it is helpful though if it just acts as a forwarding service. Let's say I put in something like fyleowspam@spamex.com and all it will do is forward that to my real address. I can see how it is useful though since you can turn off email accounts that just recieve spam but i would like something more flexible.

hmm... but do you really want to have to check an account for every company that has your email address? for me, it's more convenient to just have one mailbox...

and there are plenty of good free email providers, you can do a search if you want, there have been other threads about that.

 

[Soybomb]

Disconnect your modem. Seriously I think its way more work to fight spam than just delete it.

Anyway I have my own domain and mail sent to any address there goes to me so I have done things like amazon@domain.com before. That said none of the reputable companies have leaked my email address (as suspected). Instead most of my spam comes from my email address being listed as the domain owner from whois info.

My advice, get a new email address and give it out like you would your social security number. Use a designated "spam box" to sign up for spam stuff at

 

[fyleow]

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[fyleow]

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[gopunk]

btw, depending on your mail server, you can get away with putting stuff like fyleow+anandtech@whatever.com and it will still go to teh mailbox of fyleow@whatever.com.

 

[MrBond]

Get an account with MyRealBox.com. Then, follow these guidelines. (This is long, but worth the read)

Do not use it to sign up for anything free. I mean anything. Websites like "myfreepresent.com" will sell your email address to other companies in a heartbeat. I am convinced 90% of my spam comes from signing up for free offers back in the hot deals heyday.

If you're registering for a site, either use a hotmail account or a spamhole (www.spamhole.com). Forums are usually ok. I'd say 99.9% are safe, but some places will sell your email address as a last resort if they go out of business or need money. I trust just about every major forum out there except for Delphi forums. Another exception is ecommerce sites. They need a valid email address to contact you, so use one.

Read privacy policies. Read privacy policies. Read privacy policies. Read privacy policies. Read privacy policies. Most of the time if a company plans on selling your email address, ITS RIGHT THERE. Look for stuff like "we will from time to time send you information from third parties" or "we will share your email address with carefully selected companies". If a website has you filling out information like your interests, income, or other personal info, its a good bet your info will go on a list where your information will be sold.

Always look for the box "I do not wish to recieve email offers" or "I want to recieve email offers". You always have to either check/uncheck that box, it's rare for you to have to choose to be on the list. If for some reason you have to refill out the info in a form (like you're picking a username and the one you wanted is taken), make sure the box didn't get rechecked for you if you had to uncheck it. That happened to me earlier tonight. The entire form stayed the same...except for the "I would like you to spam me" boxes, which magically reset to the "yes" position.

Do not participate in aol chatrooms. Surefire way to get your email address added to a spam list. On forums, hide your email address. Even on here with Fusetalk, we had a user go through and harvest email addresses out of the forums and spam a bunch of us. I keep mine hidden here unless I'm participating in the FS/T forum.

Once you get that first spam email, its a safe bet there will be more. You're email address will be passed around the internet many many times, getting on more and more lists. Want to know how bad it can be? I have an old email address from a BBS that I stopped using in 1994 when I got a pop3 box. At the time, I had it forwarded to my new pop3 address and it still is. I haven't used that email address in 8 years. I still get spam to it.

I am considering having my ISP delete my primary email address forever, but I really don't want to give it up (it's my first name@domain, so I'm pretty attached to it) so I just deal with the spam.

 

[fyleow]

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[FeathersMcGraw]

Originally posted by: gopunk
actually, there is an easier (and probably cheaper way). i use spamex.com, which gives you something like a thousand "discardable" email addresses to use at any given time. so i'll have something like gopunk.anandtech@spamex.com for this site. it costs 10 bucks a year, but i'm pretty sure there are other services like this that are free.

SpamGourmet is a nice free redirector service that lets you accept n letters to a disposable address, after which all successive notes go into the bit bucket.

 

[Soybomb]

Check out my host, www.pair.com. I think you could get away at about $6 a month for hosting there. Top notch, my number one recommendation. I don't want any downtime on my email and for me its worth it. The web hosting is just a nice plus for me

Anyway lets use some (fake) examples here for how I have mine setup:

I created my account with pair, my email address was hobag@pair.com

I went and registered my domain hobaggery.com with pair. Unless you setup multiple boxes, all mail addressed to anything at hobaggery.com will fall through to my underlying address of hobag@pair.com

I set my incoming mail server to be mail.hobaggery.com and my outgoing to be relay.hobaggery.com with authentication turned on just because I can My outgoing email address can be setup in the email program you use to be whatever you want, I'll use hobag@hobaggery.com.

If someone gets email from me and they read the headers, they'll see it passed through mx.pair.com, but it will still have my hobag@hobagger.com addy listed as the sender.

For me its the perfect setup and I wouldn't have it any other way. I can also telnet or ssh in to check my email, or even use webmail.pair.com.

As far as the whois info, it will only show the addresses of the people listed as contacts. I registered it as hobag@pair.com and that was the ONLY time I've ever used that address and all my spam comes to that address so the logical conclusion is thats where they got it.

 

[Pliablemoose]

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