in reply to I filter my mail

I keep a decoy address and a real one. Anyone can send mail to spam@itassist.net.au but I don't check it unless I know there will be mail there that I want to read. It's great. I sign up for all the online offers with this address and the crap flows into the box and stays there.

I never type out my real address, although it's not that hard to guess. As a result, I never get spam.

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

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Re: Re: I filter my mail
by mischief (Hermit) on Oct 13, 2001 at 16:08 UTC

    I do something similar - I set up a subdomain that's configured to accept anything@, and every time some website wants me to signup and requires me to supply my email, I use <website address>@subdomain as the address. It doesn't stop the random spammers (the people who email sales@, info@, webmaster@ etc) but it's useful for seeing which sites sell my address.

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Re: Re: I filter my mail
by chazzz (Pilgrim) on Oct 13, 2001 at 17:04 UTC
    I do something similar to this, except every time i sign up for something, i create an alias, so i can track exactly where the spammer got my address from, then i have good grounds to be bitchy at whatever service i signed up with =)
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      My aunt does the same with snail mail mailorder companies she buys from. I just wish I had the time and patience to do it with either..

      Spacewarp

      DISCLAIMER:
      Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement
      of Western industrial civilization.
[reply]
Re: Re: I filter my mail
by Chady (Priest) on Oct 12, 2001 at 13:11 UTC

    So what do you use your real address for? ;-)

    someone must know it, and when they do... u're done... fwd:

    He who asks will be a fool for five minutes, but he who doesn't ask will remain a fool for life.

    Chady | http://chady.net/
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      ;P

      I hand it out to all my friends and pretty much anyone who /msgs me.

      I have almost trained my friends to the point that they will not forward crap indiscriminately. I have had to abandon one of my favourite email addresses do to an incident similar to what you say, but almost everyone thesedays knows about posting mail where spammers can get to it.

      What really bemuses me is that I use this address to post to my local Linux user group (which gets web archived) and I still don't get spam. They must use some pretty heavy-duty anti-spam software.

      ____________________
      Jeremy
      I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

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Re: Re: I filter my mail
by spacewarp (Pilgrim) on Oct 14, 2001 at 00:47 UTC
    Why even let it sit there? Direct it all to /dev/null and be done with it, as long as you're not giving it to anyone important...

    Spacewarp

    DISCLAIMER:
    Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement
    of Western industrial civilization.
[reply]

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