31 Jan
2002
31 Jan
'02
3:06 a.m.
What I do is use a HOTMAIL address as the address advertised for replies on
the usenet. The result is that HOTMAIL gets my usenet replies, which aren't
that many, and, since HOTMAIL already has bulk-mail filtering in place, it
finds bulk mailings and routes them to a "junk-mail" mailbox, which I can, if
I wish, peruse when I have time, or, it automatically ages and then dumps them
after two weeks. It's not perfect, but it's pretty useful. Moreover, you can
see what sorts of things fall through their spam filters and subsequently
"block" them from your primary mailbox. That way, you eventually get rid of
some of them. Unfortunately, the email tools provided by HOTMAIL are rather
lame, but it's that or have the extra distraction on my other email accounts.
Of course, one big problem with spam filtering is that the spammers only use
each email address once. The consequence is that blocking them does
absolutely no good.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerome Fine" <jhfine(a)postoffice.idirect.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: Anti-Spam Questions? (Was: A Special Announcement ...)
from.
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 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