[Gllug] Spam

[Robert Newson]

Martin A. Brooks wrote:

> Robert Newson wrote:
> 
>> And abandon another nice email address when it becomes too much hassle...
> 
> 
> I've had the same email address for about 5 years. I get, at worst, one 
> spam per week.
> 
> Perhaps you're using the wrong tactics to get rid of spam?

Do you mean (a) getting rid of the spam [being sent], or (b) getting rid of 
the spam that's been sent and arriving at my ISP mailbox before it arrives 
on my machine.

I'm trying to do (a) by keeping my eaddr quiet and unpublished.  I suspect 
you're doing (b) which does nothing about the actual spam sent, causing 
backbone bandwidth to be eaten up.

By my stats, >50% of the messages that arrive at my eaddrs are spam, thus 
 >50% of email sent is wasting bandwidth.  You can either fix the symptoms 
(hide the fact spam exists so that you don't see it - turn it into a 
Somebody Else's Problem), or face the truth: it does exist and fix the 
problem, eg don't give them your eaddr so that you don't become one of the 
targets.

Naively I let my original eaddr out into a public place (usenet) and it was 
harvested.  Over a period of 2-3 years, the amount of spam arriving at the 
eaddr initially exponentially grew and got to the stage whereby I would miss 
important emails as they also got filtered.  Naively I thought a mailing 
list would be a safe place, but being publically archived has proved me 
wrong again.  Thus the only way to keep my eaddr safe is to be a lurker - 
watch the discussions, but not take part.

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