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February 01, 2004
Spam Spam Spam Spam
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more! I've had it with spam. I shouldn't feel like I need a shower after going through my inbox.
So I'm preparing to take a momentous step, at least momentous for me. It's time to retire my Earthlink email address of many years and move on. But such a move needs careful consideration and strategizing, or, as we all know, I'll end up right back where I started from. So here's my plan, disposable email addresses, or DEAs as they're called.
A relatively new phenomena, disposable email addresses are available from several different web sites. These services allow you to register your REAL email address, then provide temporary email addresses for you to use for web site registration, subscribing to listservs, etc. Any messages sent to the disposable email address is forwarded to your REAL email address.
It's recommended that you use a different address for each web site which requires it, then, once the spam starts flowing in, you can cancel that address, cutting off the spammers immediately. A side benefit of these service is that you can change your REAL email address without cutting off the mail you actually WANT to receive, by just going to the service you use for the source of your DEAs and change the forwarding address. Another side benefit? You find out who's sharing your address with spammers.
There are several web sites out there that offer this service. SpamMotel is available free of charge. Spamex charges $9.95 per year to create disposable email addresses on the fly. And web-based Mailblocks offers DEAs as one of several ways to reduce spam. I'm trying Spamex on a 30-day free trial.
What anti-spam strategy works for you? If you have a favorite spam-blocking program, let the rest of us know about it. We need all the help we can get.
Now the question is, should anyone get my REAL email address? Do I trust my friends, my family, my co-workers? Nah! In the war on spam trust no one.....
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