Sick of Spam
I have had the same email address for close to 10 years now. I know I am pretty thick headed for not giving it up but it's just my nature. Needless to say my email address is probably on every spammers list imaginable. I have been getting around 30 spams a day for the past couple of years.
For the last year I have used Spamcop, which is a mail server which blocks 90% of the spammers ISPs while doing a pretty good job of not blocking legit mail. Even so, once or twice a day a porn spam or marketing junk seeps through.
Brad is pretty excited about Popfile, an email sorting system which uses Naive Bayes (machine learning stuff) to separate the good stuff from the junk. I am considering that as an option as well.
For filling out web forms on sites where a confirmation email is necessary for signup I have been using Spamhole. Spamhole sets up a temporary forward for anywhere from an hour to three days. It's a pretty good solution as long as the site is not hip to Spamhole (few are).
Ultimately, I think the only way to go is by using a whitelist. Email as an public system simply does not work. All the legislative measures being taken to make spamming illegal simply is just too little too late. I have a hotmail account with a whitelist setup on it and it works perfect. I get zero spam and the three people I want to hear from can write me there.
It's going to eventually come to the point where when you send somebody an email and you get a confirmation email back asking you to type the text in the obfuscated image to prove you are not an automation. It's gotten that bad and it will only get worse.
And no, I am never giving up my email address.
9:28:45 AM  | 
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