Chu Yeow: yourname+something@gmail.com… cool spam busting trick
June 28th, 2004
redemption in a blog: Sending to yourname label@gmail.com labels your email talks about using different gmail addresses to automatically sort your mail into labeled groups. gmail apparently allows you to use yourusername+ANYTHING as an address. This is also a good anti-spam technique. Use a different address for every site that you register at. If someone sells your address, you’ll know who it was and you’ll be able to just shut down mail that originated there. Very nice!
It’s a tough call as to whether I’d want to shift from a desktop (or laptop, in my case) email client to gmail. gmail is very nice. The integrated search of Mac OS 10.4 makes me think that Mail.app will be even spiffier to use.
It’s not as if spammers are dumb enough not to remove +label@domain from any email address.
Absolutely correct. I thought of that a little while after I posted this and had intended to add an update. This would probably work as an antispam technique for about 10 minutes.
I guess we still need Mailinator, Jetable and Spam Gourmet after all.
i use a combination of all of the above and they are all great ideas. here are a couple of techniques i use, and they seem to be very effective in combating spam.
first of all i clear the playing field by making a filter in my gmail account that sends everything to trash except for any emails that have 77777777 (for example). the way that i do this is to go to the filters in gmail and make a filter that goes like this
-7777777 (the way that you do that is that you make a filter that says “if it doesn’t have
7777777, then it goes to trash. (that is one of the options).
now this is limited, because of course everything that does not have 7777777 in the email simply goes to trash.
now here is where it gets good (step 2) make a label (gmails name for a folder) and for example, name is deb. now go to your filters and make a filter that will go like this: if it has the word deb, then label it deb. now, as long as deb puts the 77777777 somewhere in her email, it will bypass my trash and go into my inbox! i can do this for all the people that i would like to accept mail from.
now for step 3 use Chu Yeows great idea above which would be to give your email address to people like this: drade.krinfs whoever@gmail.com and if the spammer is
smart enough to remove the “whoever” out of the address, well then his/her email
will go to trash anyway because there are no 77777777 in there email, or there name is not in my labels or in the emails! good luck drade.krinfs@gmail.com
in my last post, in step 3 it should read like this:
the address would be as follows: drade.krinfs whoever@gmail.com (i had left out the sign which is essential) and then of course if someone removes the “whoever” part, the mail will go to trash for one of two reasons: the first reason being that the “77777777″ is not in the email, which automatically qualifies it for the trash, and secondly the label and the matching name are not in the email.
quick review: make a label in gmail named deb. then make a filter that states that if the email has the word deb, then it gets the label deb. now just make sure that you tell deb that her email must always have 77777777 somewhere in her email so that it won’t go to the trash. (remember that you had made a filter that said, if it DOESN’T have 77777777, then it goes to trash.
do the above for all your desired people that you want to correspond with. now lets say that you think this is to much bother to ask people to put the 77777777 in their emails.
thats ok because lets say you receive 400 junk mails per day, it is easier to retrieve the 12 or fifteen good emails from the trash, then it is to delete 388 junk mails!!
good luck.
i don’t know why the (plus sign) is not showing up in my previous posts. the email address in the previous post should read: for example drade.krinfs(plus sign)whoever@gmail.com (the plus sign needs to be the actual plus character, but it is not showing in this post) i hope that helps.