SPAM

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dian and Mike
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Dian and Mike

Does everyone get a lot of SPAM after they have sent a message to this
group?
Mike
 
From: "Dian and Mike" <[email protected]>

| Does everyone get a lot of SPAM after they have sent a message to this
| group?
| Mike

You mean because YOU posted with an open, non-obfuscated, email address as shown above ?
 
Dian and Mike said:
Does everyone get a lot of SPAM after they have sent a message to
this group?
Mike
Click to expand...


Munge your e-mail address. See
http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/mungfaq.html; however, FIRST munge the
domain so that it does not match on any registered domain. Be polite
to others in that you don't energize spam to their domain where they
have to expend their resources to handle it. That way, the spammer's
mail server can't even begin to send their crap because there will be
no receiving mail host by that name to which they can connect (i.e.,
the mail session is rejected immediately and no one except the sender
has to waste resources handling the spam). You could then secondly
munge your username but it is superfluous since munging the domain is
sufficient to thwart spam. Rather than munge your e-mail address
(assuming you even need to provide one), use the special TLD
(top-level domain) of .invalid which no one can use. The sender can
never find a receiving mail host to which it can connect by that name
to even begin trying to send spam. You would use
<user>@<domain>.invalid as your e-mail address and explain in your
signature with what .invalid gets replaced. This presumes that you
even need to supply an e-mail address. Some NSPs don't check the From
header so they don't require you to provide an e-mail address in your
posts. It could be blank or it could be some string that is not an
e-mail address. Some NSPs require a syntactically correct e-mail
address in the From header of your posts but you can use a bogus or
munged e-mail address. There are some NSPs that require you use the
same e-mail address as is recorded in your registration to use their
service, so you're screwed with those NSPs that are forcing you to
deliberately divulge a valid e-mail address (and why you might try
using an alias or disposable account to register with that NSP).

If you are willing to devote an e-mail account for a specific purpose,
like for taking newsgroup discussions offline via e-mail (which is
rude to other newsgroup visitors but might be necessary for sensitive
topics) or for forums, you could use a special filter that blocks all
spam from getting into the Inbox for that special account. You would
define a filter that looks for a special string (or passcode) in the
Subject of any e-mail delivered to that account: if that string is
*not* in the Subject header then the e-mail gets [permanently]
deleted. It could be any nonsensical string of characters, like
!BR:12A# or whatever you like, that is not likely to ever appear in
the Subject header. Keep it short, like 4 to 6 characters, so good
senders don't have to type many characters. Then in your signature of
your posts you explain that this passcode MUST be added to the Subject
or their e-mail will be automatically deleted upon delivery. You do
not munge your e-mail address in your posts. Respondents sending you
e-mail don't have to figure out how to unmunge your e-mail address
(and many e-mail clients will erase the entire To field when the user
tries to edit it which means the sender has to manually spell out your
correct entire e-mail address). Spambots that roam newsgroups to
harvest e-mail address WILL get your e-mail address but spambots do
not know how to follow instructions. Spambots also do not harvest
your instructions, and even if they did the spammer is not going to
read through the harvested list to go read those instructions.
Because the spam won't have the passcode in the Subject, it gets
immediately deleted. Munging helps eliminate anyone (except the
sender) expend their resources on handling spam in the first place but
requires respondents to unmunge. A passcode means spam may target
your special-use account but won't ever make it into your Inbox. And
if anyone does figure out to add your passcode to get their spam
through, you can easily edit the filter to change the passcode and
then update the instructions in your signature. If you have known
good senders for whom you don't want to have them bother or remember
to enter your passcode, add them to a good sender list or whitelist
rule (with their e-mail addresses or accepts anyone in your address
book). Non-whitelisted senders must use the passcode to prevent
having their e-mails automatically and immediately deleted upon
delivery, and spam won't have the passcode.

Use aliases to protect your true e-mail address if you have to provide
a legitimate e-mail address to an unknown or untrusted recipient.
Some e-mail providers include aliases as a feature of their service;
however, an alias like <yourname>+<alias>@<domain> is pretty easy for
anyone to figure out what is your true e-mail address, and even
spambots than can parse on those worthless aliasing schemes. At
www.sneakemail.com, you can define aliases which can be disposable,
disabled if you want to reuse them, changed as to which e-mail account
they redirect, and their free version of their service has decent
quotas for *personal* use. They are very anti-spam and will kill any
aliases and their accounts if you report the abuse to them. An
advantage of defining any number of aliases is that you can create a
unique one that is divulged to only a single untrusted recipient.
Then if you ever receive spam through that alias, you will know
exactly who betrayed you. I always use an alias when registering at
any site, even for well-known companies, and after a few months of not
receiving spam through that alias will I then update my account with
them to show my true e-mail address (since I really don't want to
manage a huge list of aliases). With sneakemail, and unlike
forwarding services, if you reply to an e-mail sent through your
alias, it goes back through sneakemail to strip out your headers and
use their's plus it checks that you haven't divulged your e-mail
address in the body of your reply. With simple forwarding services,
you will probably reveal your true e-mail address if you reply to
forwarded e-mail since you are sending straight from your true
account. If you only want to have a temporary alias that expires
after so many times that it gets used or after some period of time,
look at at service like www.trashmail.net.

Use disposable or temporary e-mail accounts if you want them available
for awhile. Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and Gmail are a few freebie e-mail
providers that you could use. However, I find having to wade through
the registration process for these advertisement-laden free accounts
more time consuming than just defining an alias at sneakemail or
trashmail. With an alias you can have it redirect to your real e-mail
account to which you can connect a local e-mail client rather than get
stuck with having to use a webmail interface (Gmail has POP3/IMAP4 but
their emulations suck and that service still has problems, anyway).

Protect your true e-mail address. Don't expect anyone else to do it
for you.
 
Does everyone get a lot of SPAM after they have sent a message to this
group?
Mike
Click to expand...

I would say everyone that posts to any newsgroup will get spam if they
use their real email addy.

Replies should be to the NG.

However, for whatever other special reason, if you want to put your real
addy in, munge it, and say how it's munged. That way, the spammers that
harvest addys from usenet newsgroups won't be able to work it out (it's
just a computer program) - but we will.
 
Duncan,

Where do I go to "Munge" my address. Mail Settings?? or options?? or??

Thanks,
Mike
 
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