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Sneakemail will do this for you, although currently you can only look at the message subject and the sender, not read the message. Aside from this, it will also solve a lot of your spam problems and is getting better all the time.

Want to fight back? There is a super easy way to doing it.

First, report all spam you get. It's easier then you think too -- Spamcop is a great free service which parses the headers of a spam and reports it for you automagically. It's pretty keen.

Second, check out Sneakemail to prevent spam from reaching you -- period. (See the Sneakemail descripion for a full explanation of how it works. Suffice to say, it is tres cool.)

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Don't forget, sneakemail.com is the perfect complement to disposible cc numbers. If you dont trust a e-commerce company with your cc number, why would you trust them with your email address?

I'm seriously plan to start using it Real Soon Now(TM), but getting rid of the current ones (and redoing all the subscriptions etc etc) will be a PITA. Yeah, I'm lazy. Sue me.

Sneakemail is a really cool service. It lets you create disposable emailadresses.
Whenever you need to give out your email-address (and it needs to be a real working address), you just create a new one at Sneakemail.

You should only use each sneakemail address for one service/site/whatever. Why, you ask?
Well, if you later gets spam on that address (which you only have given to the site "http://wesellsyouraddresstospammers.com" then you will know that either they have sent spam to you, or some spammer in some way have bought your address from that company. After telling that company how much you disgust them, you can just delete the address and they have a fake address.

Together with Spamcop you are ready to fight the spammers!

Greetings Joergen

If you don't like spam, I recommend sneakemail. I haven't given out my real address to sites or businesses in months. I've seen a reduction in my spam intake (except for some place that continues to think I'm a debt ridden home owner looking to start a business on the internet). YMMV, but I like this better than the filter war I was in--gives me the trump card.

These "sneak email" addresses are aliases of your real address, which is kept hidden.

You can enter these Sneakemail addresses into web forms or use them to contact e-businesses without the risk of your real address being abused or bought and sold.

Consider each Sneakemail address as an informal agreement between you and an online business or organization.

You agree to allow them to contact you through this address, and they in turn, by accepting and using this address, agree not to abuse this privilege by sending you unwanted solicitations or to give or sell your address to others.

The best way to understand Sneakemail, if you don't know the technology involved, is with a telephone analogy.

Imagine you discovered that, due to a technical error, the phone company freely gave you a new phone number whenever you asked and didn't revoke the previous number. If you kept asking you would accumulate a bunch of phone numbers that all went to your one phone line. You realized that, if you could find a phone that showed the number somebody was using to call you (reverse-caller-id?) you could do something very useful.

Every time you needed to fill out a credit card application, or a store clerk asks for your phone number, you would give out a unique phone number obtained just for that purpose. That way, if you start getting calls from telemarketers at that particular number you could call up the phone company and tell them to disconnect it. Not only do you succeed in stopping the annoying calls, but you know who gave them your number.

Sneakemail works just like an unlimited supply of phone numbers and a "reverse-caller-id" phone, except, of course, the phone numbers are sneakemail addresses, which you can create freely, and the special phone is your inbox.

These "sneak email" addresses are aliases of your real address, which is kept hidden.

You can enter these Sneakemail addresses into web forms or use them to contact e-businesses without the risk of your real address being abused or bought and sold.

Consider each Sneakemail address as an informal agreement between you and an online business or organization.

You agree to allow them to contact you through this address, and they in turn, by accepting and using this address, agree not to abuse this privilege by sending you unwanted solicitations or to give or sell your address to others.

The best way to understand Sneakemail, if you don't know the technology involved, is with a telephone analogy.

Imagine you discovered that, due to a technical error, the phone company freely gave you a new phone number whenever you asked and didn't revoke the previous number. If you kept asking you would accumulate a bunch of phone numbers that all went to your one phone line. You realized that, if you could find a phone that showed the number somebody was using to call you (reverse-caller-id?) you could do something very useful.

Every time you needed to fill out a credit card application, or a store clerk asks for your phone number, you would give out a unique phone number obtained just for that purpose. That way, if you start getting calls from telemarketers at that particular number you could call up the phone company and tell them to disconnect it. Not only do you succeed in stopping the annoying calls, but you know who gave them your number.

Sneakemail works just like an unlimited supply of phone numbers and a "reverse-caller-id" phone, except, of course, the phone numbers are sneakemail addresses, which you can create freely, and the special phone is your inbox.

I don't understand why these companies think it is a "service" to me for them to keep my credit card number on file for a few years. I can understand holding it for 30 or 60 days after the transaction or something, but I haven't bought anything from Egghead in over a year.

Yep. I'm probably being the victim of that right now (I do remember opting out of some spam recently, and the spam I receive skyrocketed). It might have been that son-of-a-female-dog that de-spamproofs people's e-mail in /. too.

I'm very much inclined to obliterate all my e-mail addresses and go to Sneakemail.

As always, sneakemail becomes handy.

Sneakemail gives you the control over your email-address back - it lets you decide who gets to send you email. If somebody screws you (by sending spam, etc.), you just cancels that email-address.

Greetings Joergen

Spam costs real money to the ISPs that become unintentional spam victims, the free mail domains that spammers forge return addresses from, the victims who purchase commercial software from people not smart enough to set up a mail server to not be an open relay, and the sysadmins that have to constantly refine their spam filters from spammers continual spam filter dodging techniques.

As long as spammers do not get sent to jail for their acitons, they will continue to spam. These people could care less if they make 10,000,000 people angry, as long as they get a few thousand dollars by scamming ignorant internet users.

The only way to make the internet a place where people feel safe putting their east-to-remeber email address on a web page, in a usenet posting, or in the whois data for a domain is to make spamming a crime, and to prosecute spammers to the fullest extent of the law.

BTW, I have written some pretty effective anti-spamming software here. Note that this software only runs on Linux/Unix machines. Windows users can use sneakemail.

- Sam

If you do, be sure to use a SneakEmail address to prevent spamming. *Jumps for Joy*

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CitizenC

Instead of using a free Hotmail account, try out Sneakemail!

It's a cool and simple way to create disposable email-addresses and avoid spam.

Whenever you need to give away a working email-address, you just create a new sneakemail-address, which you use instead. All mail from these sneakemail addresses will be sent to your real email-address, but if you recieve spam on one of the sneakemail addresses - you'll know *where* the spammer got your address from!
Example: You give out an email-address to Amazon.com (and *only* to Amazon.com - you should only give out each sneakemail-address once!) and a few weeks later you recieve spam on that address. Because Amazon.com was the only peolpe aware of that email-address, you can be certain that it was them which either sent you spam, or has given your addres out to others!

If this doesn't make any sense to you, go read the tutorial on the sneakemail site - they are much better written.

Greetings Joergen

OK the article made some valid points, I can't argue there. And I don't think anyone can argue that SPAM is a real pain in the arse.

As part of my job is sys admin for our main mail servers I need to look at options that limit the amound of SPAM and crap that comes into our systems everyday. I prefectly understand why MAPS blackholed the web services of Media3 and I think it was fairly well explained by MAPS in their press release:

"The proprietors of these websites send massive amounts of unsolicted mail from an account with an ISP, then when that account is shut down for violating that ISP's terms of service, they just move on to another ISP. In these cases the only way to get them to stop sending the unwanted email is for the company hosting the advertised site to get involved. If they don't, there is no incentive for the unsolicited email to stop, and then we are forced to protect our own mail servers from the onslaught of that unwanted email."

If the owners of these websites were doing the spamming off the servers that host their website they are bound to have the plug pulled on both their website and their mail. But because they are abusing another ISPs services for just their email they aren't having anything done to them.

Now what MAPS did by blocking whole Class C netblocks is probably a bit of overkill, but I am sorry if I had the choice of having to enter about 10 - 20 IPs in a list or entering just one entery I would opt for the one.

I would just like to query the author of the story and any other sys admins who thinks what MAPS has done is wrong, with what should we do to stop the SPAM affectively? The only suggestion I have seen is to use somehting like sneakemail.com. but that is only viable for end users and not for network administration. So instead of saying something is crap, why don't you work out a better way of ridding the world of SPAM?

Graham

Spam is like porn, in that control of its distribution is the goal of some organisations.

Unfortunately the problem is always the same, what is spam/porn? This problem is exacerbated by the fact some people want spam/porn.

Thus it is properly a Receiver decision, not a third-party one.

The trick, is to give the end-point control.

The difficulty with spam is protecting your email address.

This cannot be done easily, the answer is to have many addresses.

Many people use web-based email this way, dumping compromised addresses and signing up with a new id. This is a temporary respite, as it starts the cycle again and imposes the burden of notifying all your correspondents.

SneakEmail, on the other hand provides you with:

1. An infinite number of email addresses (that all deliver to a single email box).

2. The addresses can be filtered in such a way that email which doesn't come from an acceptable address is held, or dumped.

3. A range of useful management tools for the multiple addresses.

The important difference is it is the end-user, not some self-appointed group who makes the decision.

One is Sneakemail, another is mailexpire, but I think thats defunct now. They work on a level that lets the user be proactive about spam protection and not rely on remote software or local filters that "censor" your inbox. I can tell you that sneakemail is rapidly becoming popular, and in no small part because of this reason.

On a consumer level, one of the best ways to fight spam is be proactive on a marketing level. We created a service called Sneakemail that lets the average user implement the "get your own domain and make a new address for each use". Our philosophy is to reduce the "value" of email addresses given out to ebiz while keeping the "value" of them for you the same. A disposable sneakemail address has less value for an online business, its only just a temporary and revokable contract of contact between you and them and has little value for resale. Its also in an ebiz's best interest to keep that address to themselves because spam sent to that address from elsewhere can be very easily traced back to them.

The whole spam war is sorta like the war on drugs, the harder you make it for spammers to get spam to your inbox, the more valuable the spam becomes and the more its worth it to them. But if you take the value of your email address for them away its probably not worth their time and money.

1. I use Sneakemail to create a unique, disposable and revokable email alias anytime I want to provide or publish an email address that has the potential for being harvested by spambots. I've used dozens for places like NYTimes that require an email address to register, and not once has one of these been compromised by spammers or been abused by the registrar. Those used to post at Slashdot, Deja or at my own site usually take about 2-4 weeks to start showing spam-sign. Obviously, these have been harvested and are being sold to the chickenboners. With Sneakemail, I can keep my regularly inbox insulated while keeping tabs on where the leaks are.
2. The other one that I like is Despammed. They take a more traditional filtering approach to the game, using email forwarding to keep your inbox clean. Works pretty well. Additionally, I suspect that simply having the "spam" string in my email address gets the address aggregators to self-filter, which is pretty hilarious when you think about it.

   Except for cases where bots troll the WHOIS database, my inbox stays pretty clean.

Well, this also has been posted many times...

Sneakemail.com does all that for you without all that hassle.

I just started getting nailed with spam, and from big names too like verizon, and abercrombiekids at an addresses that didnt even exist until a few days ago. Well, actually, since I added that address to my qmail dot files the mail is getting through now. The address must have been build from my first name and my domain. Theres only one place where that info would have come from.

But the spam company does give my the option of opting-out, FROM EACH SPAM CAMPAIGN, ONE AT A TIME AS THE SPAM COMES IN.
Behold the convenience http://mx01.edirectnetwork.net/cgi-bin/optout.cgi? email=sucker@yourdomain.com&e=734813 &ppi d=1

I should note that I add new aliases all the time to help me track - and stop - the sources of spam.

So do I, but I do it with Sneakemail, thats what it was made for.

Thats no joke, I used a sneakemail address made just for slashdot just a few months ago and its been spammed to from about 8 "different" spammers. This place is crawling with harvesters! Or at least I hope its harvesters!

Don't forget asdf@asdf.com (poor bastards at asdf.com)

Seriously, nobody should be giving out their real address ANY place on the net.

Either you should make it up, or if it needs to be valid (for confirmations, reciepts, unlock keys, etc) it should be either be a junk hotmail account or Sneakemail.com.

Sorry this is off topic, but the originator of this thread was just asking for my standard lecture.

Opensourcing an app the relies on their own network/servers- big risk, big deal; its just a publicity stunt.

Anyway, Sneakemail.com has better anti-spam/remailer features anyway, and their optional client has been in the the public domain. I'm sure the other features of zeroknowledge can be found elsewhere too.

Thats what I used to do, but then I developed a better solution. sneakemail.com

I hope this gets moderated up to get the word out.

To quote from the sneakemail site:

Consider each Sneakemail address as an informal agreement between you and an online business or organization.

You agree to allow them to contact you through this address, and they in turn, by accepting and using this address, agree not to abuse this privilege by sending you unwanted solicitations or to give or sell your address to others.

If they abuse this privilege, by using Sneakemail, you have more control.

Sneakemail.com is a more proactive defense for a user fighting spam- used alone or as a backup. Using it on slashdot I've already seen it do its job against (possibly) seven spammers in the last few months. Apparently, a lot of harvesting goes on here, so be sure to mangle, use your junk account, or use something like Sneakemail. Sneakemail also has a link from the above mentioned spamcop, as well as www.cauce.org and junkbusters, which are also good resources.

Thats one of the very reasons why we created sneakemail

You may want to receive spam mail of some sort but want to have to option of stopping it even if they are too inept to stop it themselves, or dont care. It may be polls, jokes, product announcements, etc, all legit but sort of spammish. Sneakemail gives you this control.

Assuming that using a disposible cc number is anonymous, (why wouldnt it be, it would be like a phone card), by using this and sneakemail.com an "e-consumer" would have much more control over his/her purchasing identity and power over junk in their mailboxes (both snail and e) and more importantly, would significantly impact the very valuable side effect of current purchases - customer data. By drying up that source of data we might effect businesses hunger for it, turning their desire elsewhere (maybe towards quality), and be closer to turning an ebusinesses view of the internet as a black box that their goods go in and money comes out. Of course the danger is that cc companies see the value and start selling customer data back to the ebusinesses.

sneakemail.com solves this problem for you without all that inconvenience. But in this case spam should be the least of your worries.

You can use SneakeMail exactly the same way.

1. does not have a privacy statement
2. does not explain its operation clearly in advance (in fact, says essentially nothing).
3. tells me to create an account blindly, and promises to explain everything as it goes along
4. explains nothing before collecting my real e-mail address
5. does not explain its revenue model (if they go belly up, they may sell their customer list)
6. makes no privacy promises regarding the mail that passes through it, before sign-up (so they can freely make a list of all the porn sites you do business with, but don't want spamming you

Spam wont stop, its too easy and cheap. Even if it was legislated outta existence in the u.s. and other countries it can still come in from other countries, or even from antartica, or the moon for all we know. But this isnt the real problem. Although there will probably always be occurances of senseless acts of random spam they wont compare to the pseudo-spam caused by "opt-in" tricks: Companies that have their "send me opt-in spam" checkboxes that are "checked", companies that opt you in from nowhere without your permission and then deny it, and those times when you just cant opt-out because their system of opting you out is some temp using excel and the remove@we_arent_spammers.com mail spool file. I've even seen spam that made me make a phone call to be removed. Now multiply that by the increasing number of times your using online businesses. Sure you can keep using throw away addresses and help keep hotmail off nt boxes, or you can use a more elegant and powerful solution called Sneakemail like I do.

That spam problem is curable, just use sneakemail, and at the same time you dont have to be paranoid about privacy if you dont want to. Its basically a "no abuse" contract between a e-business and an e-customer. (sorry about those "e-'s")

There's a much more elegant and effective way to do it, use sneakemail

you can take a lot of the "commodity" out of that email address if you use sneakemail. By using it you have a great deal of control over that email address. If enough people start using it sneakemail addresses will start being seen to be of questionable value to buyers and sellers but will still be perfectly valid for legit use by businesses.

And then there's always Despammed.Com, which has a good filtering system, but needs an account management method.

You don't have to be a wizard to know you never divulge your personal information when you browse the Web. Use an insulating email address (in fact, I'm hooked on the "revokable" email forwarding service at SneakEmail.) Live under a pseudonym, use false demographics if the request bugs you, filter cookies or at least periodical wipe them if you don't want to be tracked or profiled (really, it's just the multi-session/cross site persistent cookies that are a problem). Hide your IP address with a proxy maybe (big list here). Filter or disable Javascript. The only time I'll cross the threshold and divulge my true identity is if I really need to spend money for something which is rare. Otherwise, they can deal with JojoIndianCircusboy, Dirk Diggler, or Art Vandalay. Don't rely on anyone to be your defender...least of all the one's promising to protect your data.

Why doesnt anybody every complain about how your email address gets into the hands of these spammers? Either they are harvesting them from text sources or somebody you trusted let your address slip out. As more and more ebiz happens, the more everybody sprays their addresses all over the net, whether its a "keeper" like me@mydomain.com or disposable like whatever@hotmail.com. If you want to have fun tracking who's dealing your addresses, and protect a good address too, have a look at sneakemail.com, and if you dont like what you see, give us some constructive criticism and well try to improve it for you.