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My new email signature
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Location: Blogs Zairgit Blog |
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| Posted by: Zair Git |
8/31/2007 6:39 PM |
This is my new email signature:
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Save me from spam.
http://www.zairgit.com/spam
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That hyperlink points to this blog entry, and I explain it in the paragraphs below.
IMO, spam filters tend to suck. The worst case scenario is that I miss an important email, because the filter thought it was spam. Months go by and the individual thought I blew them off. *sigh* As a quick background, my life on the Internet started like most GenXers. I got my first email account on hotmail or something similar. Surfing around, at the time, who knew that it was bad to give your email address to random websites. But, like most users, I found that the set of spam quickly eclipsed the set of email that I wanted to see. So, the solution was to sign up for a new email address. Yay! Spam be gone!
When I started my own company, I realized that my email address would likely remain the same for a long time. A quandry. Some people set up a seperate email address for when they had to give up their address online. But that line blurs, because the more our lives are integrated with online services, the more our email addresses get out there. Do I sign up at my bank under my real email address or my fake one? What about myspace? What about that forum I want to subscribe to?
The solution to the problem I found is a catch-all email account. Let's say you buy the domain name johndoe.com, and set your email address to me@johndoe.com. If you set your email address as a catch-all account, anything@johndoe.com is forwarded to me@johndoe.com. So... then you sign up for new accounts with any random name. Sign up for facebook... facebook@johndoe.com. Someone sent you a news story and you just need a throw away account to view it... onetimestory@johndoe.com. Haven't figured out the point to all this? Well, if one of these blokes crushes you with spam, you set up a quick filter; all mail sent to that address get sent directly to the trash. Problem solved. You can get catch-all accounts for less than $10 a year. If it solves all of your spam problems; heck, I think it's worth it. Granted, gmail and other offer a similar solution. But those are all pattern-based. And sites are starting to pick up on them, and block them. My solution solves it by giving you infinite free-form email addresses. There's no way for them to detect a pattern.
The achilles heel to all this - your trusted contacts ratting you out. "Send this article to a friend." says washingtonpost.com. Consarnit. I protect my address so well, they started hitting up my friends and family to give it up. And the worst offenders - "Add your entire address book to our social network!" Hooray! This is also known as, "Just give us your user name and password and we'll go through your personal address book, and automatically add everyone you know to our system, so that we can spam the bajesus out of them!" This is where my signature comes in. Spreading a little awareness. People, if you want to screw yourselves, be my guest. But leave my precious email address out of it.
Hammering the point home, I get this letter, mailed to my home address. It reads:
Recently, a malicious software, known as Infostealer.Monstres, was used to gain unauthorized access to the Monster resume database. Regrettably, some of the contact information that was captured included your name, address, telephone number and email address.
Wow. Thanks for telling me. I think. Really, anyone with a phone book can pretty much find my name, address, and telephone number. What can they do with the information anyway? Phone and paper mail is too expensive and traceable for script kiddies overseas to spam me that way. The real troubling thing is that my email address is now in a hacker's database. Hackers make a practice of trading email address lists around. Basically, I'm set up to get spammed from around the globe. Sooner or later, I might have to give up my email address. Crap. And I really thought that Monster would use that multi-million dollar security budget to protect my email address at least. But wait! They never got my real email address. [Insert jig here]
More and more, I manage my social and business lives via email. The loss of information or productivity, due to spam management stands to spin out of control. If you want to try my technique, sign up for your new catch-all email account, and practice by registering on this site as zairgit@mynewcatchallemail.com. Or whatever you come up with. I might send you a few more tips like this one. Heck, if I start spamming you too much, you now know how to filter.
And damn. I just thought of a dope new startup. Anyone want to fund it? Email me at .............
....waiiiiit. ;)
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