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Some Ways To Avoid Spam On Gmail

Posted by timothy on from the mutant-sharks-are-too-good-for-'em dept.

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"."

5 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Suggestions will not work by Kolisar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I receive some spam every day on my GMail account and, looking at the headers, it seems that the spammers are randomly generating the email addresses and my address, eventually, gets generated and receives spam. Fortunately, the GMail spam filter has successfully caught all of the spam.

  2. Password generator by ajs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For an account name, apg is fine. For passwords, I've created a far more flexible system which I distribute with documentation describing password generation from my site.

    The key to good password generation is allowing the user to describe how it's to be done. This increases the ability to memorize passwords and makes it harder for an attacker to guess.

    To that end, I have created a sort of reverse regular expression syntax where you describe the password to the program using general patterns. Try it out.

  3. check this email addy .. by jokach · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Get an email address from here:

    http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/

    most spammers won't think you're serious.

  4. Spam, by nature... by suso · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think by nature, spam gets more and more like real messages. This means that eventually all spam filtering becomes ineffective. Someone could probably make a research paper out of this.

  5. I have an alternative approach by TractorBarry · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well I got a GMail account especially so I can use it to sign up to bulletin boards, forums and to use when I order stuff over the web etc. etc.

    That way all the spam I get should start going to my GMail account thereby leaving my real email account (hosted on my home server) free for me to use with friends and family etc. (It's been 100% spam free in the nine months I've been using it)

    Previously I'd been using a "throwaway" domain name I bought specially for this (which gets redirected to a real account) but it's due for expiry soon and, now I have a GMail account, it can go ! So my top tip of the week is get several free web mail accounts and use them for everything but your private stuff.

    And on this note I'd never use my GMail account for any private stuff as, fer fecks sake, they're a SEARCH company. How long do you think it'll be before their new corporate shareholder overlords start doing some real intensive data mining on all your GMails ?

    "But dude, their motto is do no evil" I hear you squeak. Sorry, they're a publically listed company and will do whatever "the market" tells them to do...

    --
    Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !