31 Jan
2002
31 Jan
'02
5:23 a.m.
Clint Wolff (VAX collector) wrote:
When I was with Qwest.net, I received very little
spam, but I also gave
my email address to very few companies, and NEVER posted to Usenet with
it (even spam-ified)...
Jerome Fine replies:
Well, Usenet is where I would like to be able to have individuals respond from.
Can anyone suggest how to set up an e-mail address that can be easily
modified with human instructions of a few words, but is not able to be
mined by a spam search program? I could probably add 4 extra random
letters to my name (in front of the @) and have them replaced by the 4 digits
for the year (2002) and change that every year as required. The fall back
to the year would only be used when the 4 random character version is
deactivated due to too much spam. Has anyone ever tried this method?
Or the 4 extra random characters could always be fake?
When I switched to Earthlink, my mailbox was full of
spam before I even
got the DSL line connected. I turned on their 'Spaminator' filter, and
haven't received any since. YMMV.
Does that mean that Earthlink was "selling" your e-mail address?
Since most of these people are sending email out to a
CDROM full of
addresses, playing dead doesn't help. I occasionally get junk mail at
work that lists a few other addresses, and one had two of MY old
addresses from 10 years ago.
What will happen when junk e-mail to dead addresses accounts for
99% of all e-mail traffic? Is there any way that the source for every
e-mail could be made a part of the internet protocol? That would be
required as the first step in stopping unsolicited e-mail messages.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine