Spam – A Simple Guide To Keeping Your Inbox Clean

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In my opinion, the best way to keep clean of spam is simple:

The first rule is NEVER reply to spam, NEVER click the unsubscribe link and NEVER e-mail to the unsubscribe address.

These are simply underhand tactics to get ‘active’ e-mail addresses.

Some other tips to avoid getting spammed in the first place:

1) Never use your real e-mail address in newsgroups, this is the best place to get picked up by a spam bot. Use something like l33t-no-spam-at-i.hate.spam-darknet.org.uk

Then in your signature put remove -no-spam and i.hate.spam- to reply.

2) Never put your e-mail address on a publically viewable web page as it will be spidered by Google and grabbed by spammers.

If you do need to put an e-mail address use the simple JavaScript below to protect it:

<!-- Begin Darknet E-mail Saver
<SCRIPT language="JavaScript">
randomword = "l33t";
randomword2 = "darknet.org.uk";
append = "?Subject=Enquiry&Body=Please%20Insert%20Your%20Message%20Here.";
document.write('<a href=\"mailto:' + randomword + '@' + randomword2 + append + '\">');
document.write(randomword + '@' + randomword2 + '</a>');
// End -->
</SCRIPT>

3) If you do put your e-mail address anywhere try and obscure it in some way.

4) Create a disposable e-mail address (hotmail or yahoo) that you rarely check for signing up to Web-sites. Most commercial sites will bombard you with spam after you’ve signed up for whatever services they are offering. Some also sell your address to list makers or other spammer so never give your *real* e-mail address to anyone except people you want to e-mail you.

5) Don’t share your e-Mail address & Skip Compulsive Registration* This goes along with number 4, if possible don’t register, and if you do make sure you untick the ‘spam me with a newsletter’ box.

Well 5) maybe a problem. Most of the times, a search on Google shows us a site with the answer to our problem, still, a big part of them requires registration (like Expertexchange)

That’s where BugMeNot comes into play.

BugMeNot is database of login information (usernames and passwords) that you can use to access a site that requires registration. The site has a voting mechanism that enables you to vote for the Username/Password that worked for you, making the login combination with most votes, the first on the list for a specific site.

You can also add new login information to the database for the sites you can’t find a login.

There is also a BugMeNot plugin for Firefox, that enables you to automatically enter the login information for a site, with a single click of the mouse.
The plugin was made for older versions of Firefox, and it has been reported not to work with most recent versions.

BugMeNot is not the solution for everything, and sometimes you need to ‘share’ your e-Mail with others.

DEA – Disposable e-Mail Address – Allows you to share an e-Mail address on doubtful sites without the concern of that information being used to spam.

There are various sites providing DEA’s. Top 10 sites.

In my personal, and humble opinion, I suggest Mailinator and Wuzup Mail. Both of them supporting RSS.

Mailinator will create a random e-Mail address every time you refresh the site, which you can then use to register on the more doubtful sites.

WuzupMail let’s you choose your username and will save the e-Mail’s you receive for 7 day’s.

Using both BugMeNot for compulsive registration and DEA to prevent your personal information from being used to spam, you will reduce the amount of spam you get on your Inbox everyday (if you get any).

Also remember Thunderbird has some pretty good bayesian spam filtering built in, once it’s learn your e-mail pattern it’s very effective, if you are still getting spam you can try that.

* If you need to share your personal e-Mail address, do it in a creative way. Most web spiders – crawlers – are able to spot e-Mail’s like jon at doe dot com.

Be creative, jon at |NO_SPAM_PLEASE| dot com, etc, etc.

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