Volunteering for OSS == Sign Up for Spam? 94
bckspc asks: "I've been getting pounded by spam lately, so did a Google search on my email address to see where it might appear on the Web. To my horror, it turned up several times in an archive of a Gnome listserv for a project I briefly participated in. While the email address is visibly obscured on the Web pages, it is quite intact in the HTML code. I emailed the list admin about obscuring or removing my email address, but was curtly dismissed. I'm a relative newbie and the experience soured me on participating in other OSS projects. How to Slashdot users deal with this? Must I set up disposable email accounts for every list?"
Short on solutions bar list admins clueing up (Score:5, Informative)
The only solution that will effectively work (until we fix the spam problem all round) is for list admins to be more careful about munging email addresses to some degree.
The default setting for programs such as pipermail should be one where email addresses are not explicitly displayed.
The best solution I've found to solve problems with email addresses online is Jodrell's mailto php script which renders the address obfuscated but displays it correctly in the browser using JavaScript.
http://jodrell.net/projects/mailto [jodrell.net]
Yes (Score:4, Informative)
use multiple disposable email addresses (Score:5, Informative)
Whenever I need to put my email address somewhere public (i.e. mailing lists and websites) I make up a new email address of the form mailinglistname@myaccountname.freeserve.co.uk or websitename@myaccountname.freeserve.co.uk e.g. the email address I gave slashdot is slashdot.org@myaccountname.freeserve.co.uk
The good part: when I start getting spam to a particular address I just setup a filter that sends all mail to that address to /dev/null
It also lets you know where your email address was harvested from. So when I get spam turning up on slashdot.org@myaccountname.freeserve.co.uk I know it was slashdot who sold my email address to the evil spammers ;-)
If I want to receive mail from slashdot again I just change my email on slashdot to slashdot.org2@myaccountname.freeserve.co.uk
Interestingly most of the spam I get comes in to the email address ebay.co.uk@myaccountname.freeserve.co.uk
This has worked very well for me for several years.
Spamgourmet (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Spamgourmet (Score:3, Informative)
The same user name is good for multiple domains as well, i.e., slashdot.4.johndoe@spamgourmet.com would be interchangeable with slashdot.4.johndoe@neverbox.com. I don't remember the other domains off hand.
If you don't like making a different address for each use, despammed.com has an effective filter and you can opt to forward it on to another address.
Re:False sense of security (Score:3, Informative)
There's more to it than that for those willing to dig into the advanced options. You can add trusted senders so if you're on a mailing list in archive form, you can use a disposable E-mail for it. None of the trusted sender's E-mails lower the counter of remaining E-mails to that address, and they will continue to get through to you even after the address has dropped to 0 remaining. You can set it up so the E-mails it forwards to you are ready for you to reply through Spam Gourmet, masking you real address so it looks like it came from the disposable one. You can also go in and adjust the remaining E-mails left on an address, both up and down.
Since I started using it I've had less spam problems, and I can tell you every company that sells my address. It's a great service and totally free!
The answer is yes. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:use multiple disposable email addresses (Score:4, Informative)
Whenever I need to put my email address somewhere public (i.e. mailing lists and websites) I make up a new email address of the form mailinglistname@myaccountname.freeserve.co.uk or websitename@myaccountname.freeserve.co.uk e.g. the email address I gave slashdot is slashdot.org@myaccountname.freeserve.co.uk
This will work great... right up until the point that your domain is subject to a dictionary attack by a spammer. You'll suddenly see your spam load go through the roof. And you won't be able to setup filters for each new iteration fast enough. And if it's your own server or you pay for bandwidth, your costs just keep rising.
You're better off creating real aliases for each new account and letting the server respond with a 550 invalid user for all others.
If you haven't been dictionary attacked yet... just wait... it'll happen... sooner or later.
Run your own mail server! (Score:4, Informative)
USERNAME+%2@yourdomain.com USERNAME
Which will deliver all mail in the form of bob+amazon@hisdomain.com to bob@hisdomain.com. Use a different name on each site, but you don't need to create aliases for each user. When you start getting spam to that address, just add a line *before* the one above of
USERNAME+SOMESITE@yourdomain.com error:nouser User has been removed because of SPAM
I only wish I had started doing this before my primary addresses had been harvested