Anti-Spam Questions? (Was: A Special Announcement ...)

From: Jerome Fine <jhfine_at_postoffice.idirect.com>
Date: Thu Jan 31 10:23:50 2002

>Clint Wolff (VAX collector) wrote:

> When I was with Qwest.net, I received very little spam, but I also gave
> my email address to very few companies, and NEVER posted to Usenet with
> it (even spam-ified)...

Jerome Fine replies:

Well, Usenet is where I would like to be able to have individuals respond from.
Can anyone suggest how to set up an e-mail address that can be easily
modified with human instructions of a few words, but is not able to be
mined by a spam search program? I could probably add 4 extra random
letters to my name (in front of the _at_) and have them replaced by the 4 digits
for the year (2002) and change that every year as required. The fall back
to the year would only be used when the 4 random character version is
deactivated due to too much spam. Has anyone ever tried this method?

Or the 4 extra random characters could always be fake?

> When I switched to Earthlink, my mailbox was full of spam before I even
> got the DSL line connected. I turned on their 'Spaminator' filter, and
> haven't received any since. YMMV.

Does that mean that Earthlink was "selling" your e-mail address?

> Since most of these people are sending email out to a CDROM full of
> addresses, playing dead doesn't help. I occasionally get junk mail at
> work that lists a few other addresses, and one had two of MY old
> addresses from 10 years ago.

What will happen when junk e-mail to dead addresses accounts for
99% of all e-mail traffic? Is there any way that the source for every
e-mail could be made a part of the internet protocol? That would be
required as the first step in stopping unsolicited e-mail messages.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
Received on Thu Jan 31 2002 - 10:23:50 GMT