Slashdot Mirror
Some Ways To Avoid Spam On Gmail
jafo writes "In general, Gmail has been extremely spam-free. More recently, however, it's gotten dramatically worse. I've written up some thoughts on Gmail spam and keeping the spam down. Want less spam on Gmail (and likely others)? Try generating an account name using "apg -M L -t"."
I was curious about how much spam gets auto generated. I have a fairly common name so I used one of my gmail invites with my normal gmail account to make an account with my firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
I havn't used or given it out to anbody, the spam folder gets about 25 messages a day. Luckly google has done a perfect job with marking them all spam.
I keep getting the same spam over and over which starts "TOP SOFTWARE...". It's mostly the only one I see and GMail recognises it as spam, but the same message keeps coming to my spambox several times a day. I wish they'd just ban it.
I actually forwarded my domain catch-all address to gmail because of the amount of spam bouce messages I was recieving - something in the order of 1500 per day. My Mozilla Thunderbird behind a Brightmail-filtered ISP just wasn't coping with the load so I dropped it all on gmail. It did a fantasitic job, with a few tweaks set up, and now that my spam load has died down again a bit, I'm hooked on gmail despite my love for Thunderbird.
Here's the tweaks I used
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
I'm getting about 5 a day now. I have a sinking feeling I accidentally put my real email instead of a throw away one into some online something or other.
On the other hand, Gmail marks every last one of them correctly.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Erm, ever heard of BCC?
Spamcop reports as originally being from a "ajicccln.info" address. They're using a nameguessing system, too. I wonder why Google doesn't just block their IPs totally?
no - it was a deliberate post under my username. I was curious to see what would happen [I'll post anon now, because it seems people dont see the funny side to it]
Something I'd like to know (and this isn't stated in the article) is: which of his accounts has been published somewhere on the net (or available to the public in any harvesting kind of way).
Doesn't matter if your account is simply garbage, as long as someone can spider it on the web. All honor to the dictionary attack, but as we all know, it doesn't take very long before someone finds your account on the web. Also, there are ways to prevent this.
I never have my mailto clickable, and I use combinations of images to display it.
I don't know about you, but suggesting people selecting rheyghyab@gmail as their email address seems pretty stupid to me. Granted, spammers will have a hard time guessing it, but everybody else will have a hard time remembering it.
Underholdning.info
I use Jetable.org (time expiring email relay addressess) to when signing up or doing something that I might suspect might get me on a spam list. This way email get's sent to my gmail (or any other account) for a limited time and if the spammer gets a hold of the jetable email address, it just expires after a set time period. VERY useful!
And it's totally free!
http://www.jetable.org/en/index
Want to know a secret?? Gmail does have POP3 access. configure it from your preferences. You have to manually enable it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
You could try admin.(your name)@gmail.com or abuse.(your name)@gmail.com . Those are generally filtered out by spam companies, you could get less spam, but it still probably wouldn't stop it completely.
If you are looking for an invite, check out http://www.freegmailinvites.com/. It DOES actually work. That is where I got my gmail account. I just donated 10 new invites to the site.
www.DIYTVAntennas.com
If you use Mozilla 1.7.x or Firefox, you can install URIid. Then add this line to your userContent.css (or you can get ChromEdit):
Of course, feel free to add any CSS.
I wonder if the spammers caught it yet. Gmail supposedly supports syntax of youraccountname+arbitrarytext@gmail.com and the email still gets delivered, plus can be filtered. If spammers don't get the idea tp cut the +...@ part off, you may easily post you+webpage001@gmail.com on your webpage and once harvested by spammers, change to you+webpage002, while blocking all emails with 001, etc. Same with "temporary stuff", like, say, logins to "suspect" sites, ebay auctions etc. Whenever it's not needed anymore, filter it off.
Of course sooner or later spammers will learn to remove the + part. Then still putting periods at arbitrary places of your gmail u.s.ern.ame remains
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"