On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 03:27:42 GMT, Rick Colombo <
[email protected]>
was understood to have stated the following:
>If I have to explain this to you, I'd rather add you to my kill file.
You don't have to explain it to me; there was a bit of sarcasm in my
statement. Although honestly the influx of spam and viruses to my
system is extremely low. My current email address has been active for
about two and a half years; I may get a spam once every other week;
there are 67 emails in my spam folder, and I don't filter or delete.
You can add me to your kill file if you see fit; won't bother me much.
:-D
>OTOH, if you don't receive spam and/or viruses as much as the rest of
>us, then please share your "kill" file with the rest of us/world 
No kill file; don't use 'em for email or usenet. Been nntp'ing now for
about 6 years or so, and have yet to put the kill filter to anyone.
Protecting your email account isn't as much about having a kill file
or a good set of filters, it's about reducing the possibility of
receiving the spam in the first place. Since I've already written in
this thread how I handle viruses, I'll spend the rest of this post
describing some manners to reduce the possibility your email addy will
be harvested by a spammer. For already spam receiving accounts,
though, there isn't much hope. Most of this stuff is common sense
stuff I figured out, and then read about in different sources, both
online and off.
(1) Don't post your email addy in public locations, such as a web site
or news group. If you do, use a disposable and/or munged address.
(2) When you sign up for *anything* on line, use a disposable address.
Munging addresses; you've seen it, so I won't bother to explain it in
too much detail. I will say that I would be extremely leery of doing
something like merely adding "NOSPAM" to my email address when I
posted; I believe at some point the email harvesters will start to get
wise and do global searches and cuts through their databases. Also,
for courtesy's sake, when munging an address, don't use a real server;
the server has to utilize resources just to reject the message. Of
course, this "real server" criteria doesn't apply if you choose AOL,
MSN, or WebTV. :-D
Disposable addresses are very cool; spamgourmet.com is a wonderful
idea, and I'm sure there are more like it out there. Basically, once
you've created an account with them, you can create email addresses on
the fly for whatever purpose; you don't even have to be near a
computer. Handy for giving out email addresses off-line to someone you
believe might give it to the marketing department. Anyway, after a
preset number of emails arrive through the address, the server starts
gobbling them up, unless you log on to spamgourmet.com and reset the
address(es). Spamgourmet's maximum number of emails per address is 20.
You can also set a "trusted sender" for each of your addresses,
excluding them from the limitation. Disposable address creation is
simple, although it gets a little less simple if you choose to operate
in paranoid mode. For example, I just created the
"
[email protected]"
address, and as it's publicly posted, my in box will receive some
combination of spams and viruses (and possibly usenet responses)
totaling 20 unless I do something about it. After 20, they stop
coming. The nice thing about disposable addresses is that if you
create a unique email address for every company you interact with, you
will know *exactly* who sold your email address should you receive
bulk mail in the future.
(3) Recommend to your Outlook-using associates that they spend the
time to learn how to "lock it down", and that they keep their system
nice and patched. Even better is to convince them to switch to another
product, but some people have their head shoved too far up to make the
switch.
(4) If you're the recipient of anyone's mass-email-forwards, ask that
they either BCC you as opposed to CC you, and/or give them a
disposable email address with them as the trusted sender.
