How to avoid (more) spam in your inbox?

[psemianonymous]

Please add your own suggestions. My list so far goes:

1. Do not post to USENET and give out your email address. This is the easiest way for spammers to harvest your email address.

2. Do not post (or allow to be posted) your email address on a crawlable web site. This means that you can submit your email to tek-tips, but don't put your email address on your home page, at least not in raw text format.

3. Don't give out your real email address to web sites. I keep a "online account" email address which I use for sites which require an email address. This is not the email address I check daily; usually I only check it if I have signed up for a new service and need to "confirm" the email address.
While we're on touchy ground here, let me state that I am pleased with Tek-Tips' policy on email opt-ins: by default, the options are off, which is different from every other service I've seen. Ever.

4. Don't use hotmail. I created a hotmail account just to hold the name; within days it was flooded with spam. I don't know how they do it, and I'm pretty sure that I didn't allow myself to be published in the Hotmail white pages.

5. Don't use AOL - but you already knew that.

6. When installing "free" programs such as RealPlayer, do not give them your real email address. I think Real is one of my most-hated companies, up there with McAfee in their brute-force advertising coersion (sp?) and the devolution of their programs into worse products than their predecessors (but this is fodder for another topic).

7. Before signing up for your email account, consider the long-term. I have had a juno email account for five years now, and though their service has fluctuated (a brief but wonderful period of free dial-up followed by a harsh cutback of services), I am pleased overall with their service. Before anyone takes this as a ringing endorsement, I might as well go over the pros and cons:

Pros:
- You can get the Juno client, and with minimal advertising, use the email client like any other Outlook/Eudora-style client. Supports "POP-like" email sending/receiving, if you already have an ISP.
- Supports dial-up mail sending/receiving for free, most everywhere in the USA, without the use of an ISP.
- Decent webmail access, so you can check your mail from the web
- It's been here for 5 years or so, and looks like it will be here for a while.
- Spam was wonderfully vacant the first several years of usage...

Cons:
- OK, I lied. The webmail is somewhat slow and terrible, not to mention there is no "s" for security when you're using it/sending your password/reading your mail.
- You can't use or upgrade to POP access for Juno, I don't think this is possible, even if you upgrade. Yahoo I know for a fact will give you POP access if you pay them yearly.
- Spam has now shot up to some 20 Korean-language articles and about 5 english-language items per day, unacceptable by most counts.


Anyway, any discussion on merits of various free (and non-free) email services is welcome, as well as more "avoid spam" tips.

--Pete

 

[manarth]

if you have to post your email address, post this way:
marc at marcsISP dot com

fortunately, (and this has been thoroughly tested!) posting this way is currently not detected by spammers. at the moment there's too much easy pickings for them to code crawlers which target the people taking steps to avoid spam.

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[sleipnir214]

Don't use your main email address as the address for a contact for a domain registration.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!

 

[GreenTeeth]

If it helps, I registered one of my hotmail accounts in India, and I was spam free for nearly 2 years.

No idea why, but it worked for me.

 

[flapeyre]

If you must give out an email address for an opt-in list, establish a SpamCop e-mail account (spamcop.net), and use that one. Many thousands of users report spam to SpamCop and it is a pretty effective filter. I use that account for Usenet posting also. It also has a web-based e-mail client, or you can configure Outlook or another POP3 client to get the mail for you. I've had very, very few spams coming through the SpamCop account. My particular ISP also finters my incoming mail, and has a special address to add to their spam filters. I have SpamCop forward every spam I get to that address, and that helps cut down on the repeats.

Anybody can report spam there for free, but the filtered e-mail will cost you a small amount ($30 per year).

Disclaimer - I'm just a SpamCop user, not otherwise connected with the service.


&quot;When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for here you have been, and there you will always long to return.&quot;

--Leonardo da Vinci

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

4. Don't use hotmail. I created a hotmail account just to hold the name; within days it was flooded with spam. I don't know how they do it, and I'm pretty sure that I didn't allow myself to be published in the Hotmail white pages.

I have a hotmail account and only get about 1 spam a month.

iSeriesCodePoet
IBM iSeries (AS/400) Programmer

Want to have all your bookmarks in one spot?

http://www.koldark.net/bookmark4u/

Make your links shorter:

http://makeashorterlink.com/

 

[Stevehewitt]

Have two accounts. Have one hotmail or yahoo for when your signing up to unknown services etc. (I did for Tek-Tips 4 years ago before I knew it, then changed!) and ideally (if you can) have your primary account on your own mail server that you administer. That way any dodgey stuff can be blacklisted, routed, copied, forwarded etc.

Steve Hewitt

 

[xutopia]

do not use an email address such as gary135@microsoft.com because you will be lynched.

They use name dictionaries and add all kinds of numbers at the end to generate email addresses to spam. Your best bet is to have an email like one these :

jean.luc.picard@microsoft.com
jlpicard@microsoft.com
jl.picard@microsoft.com

Disclaimer : of course the email addresses are fictitious. Any ressemblance to a real company or a real email address are purely coincidential. I take no responsibility for spamming robots picking up these addresses and sending 5000 spams to it.



Gary

http://www.xutopia.com

Haran
==========================

 

[xutopia]

oh yeah another way to avoid spamming robots!

<script language=&quot;Javascript&quot; type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;>
document.write([&quot;g&quot;,&quot;h&quot;,&quot;a&quot;,&quot;r&quot;,&quot;a&quot;,&quot;n&quot;,&quot;@&quot;,&quot;teaser&quot;,&quot;.&quot;,&quot;fr&quot;].join(&quot;&quot)
</script>
<noscript>
gharan--*(at)*--teaser.fr
</noscript>



Gary

http://www.xutopia.com

Haran
==========================

 

[ANFPS26]

xutopia, &quot;Beam me up Scottie&quot;. I see you're a Star Trek fan.
I loved them all except the latest one. Couldn't get interested in &quot;Enterprise&quot;. This is off-topic, I apologise.

Jim

 

[hiphil]

Some tips on fighting spam.

Most email programs e.g. “Outlook Express” provide a means of blocking, or filtering out certain email messages. For example, you can block all messages with the word “PORN” in the subject line. But spammers are so stupid, when they find you don’t want to receive porno emails, they give them other titles like “Here is your check”, or “Message from Mom”.

This means that blocking emails is not an effective method to fight spam. Instead, you need to adopt a different approach, and that is to allow through only those emails you want. That is to say, instead of creating an enormous “Black list” of email addresses you don’t want to receive emails from, you create a “White list” of emails you do want to receive instead.

You can use the “White list” principle in “Outlook Express” as follows:

Create one or more sub-folders in your Local Folders – Highlight “Local Folders” and click on File – New – Folder.
Give your new folder a name.
If you want all your emails to go into the same folder, you could call your new folder “Friends”.
Alternatively (this is the method I prefer) create a new folder for each of your friends.
(This works for MS Outlook and Outlook Express, and should work for other email clients, e.g AOL email)

When you have created your folders, the next stage is to direct your email messages into the appropriate folders:

Suppose you have a message from your friend Alice <Alice@domain.com> in your inbox:
Highlight the message.
Click on Message – Create Rule From Message.
In the New Mail Dialog box, make sure the “Where the From line contains people” box is checked.
Check the “Move to specified folder” check box.
Click on the specified link.
Select the required folder (called Alice) from the folder selection box.
Click OK
Click OK
All messages from Alice@domain.com will be directed to your “Alice” folder, and so on.

All your unwanted emails will be left behind in your Inbox – simply check to see if there is anything you want, and delete the rest.

 

[manarth]

&quot; and should work for other email clients, e.g AOL email&quot;

guess you're not an AOL user then...a wise choice!

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[manarth]

OK, I lied - for AOL users - keyword &quot;mail controls&quot;
you can setup black lists, white lists, access based on your address book....take a look.
to stop AOL emailing you, go to keyword &quot;mps&quot;

<marc>