[ExI] Avoiding Spam

[John Klos]

Hi,

> Personally, I don't get much spam, and it's easily spotted and removed. I 
> just thought it might be worth reviving this old idea I had a few years ago 
> but didn't do anything with (because I don't really have a spam problem).

This solution has been around for ages, even in spite of Google making a 
big mess of it and having security issues because Google's too big and 
dumb to follow standards, even standards that've existed for decades 
longer than they have.

However, some spammers have picked up on this and enough email address 
scrapers just remove the + and anything after it. It still helps, though.

More than a decade ago I started doing something like this, but I create 
an actual address for each use. If I start getting spam at, say, 
john.coffeeshoponthecorner at whatever.com, which I'd've created and used 
only in one specific place ever, I know that that coffee shop was 
compromised or they shared my data. Large corporations like Oracle, Adobe, 
Amazon, Avid, Google, Microsoft and eBay have "shared", whether knowingly 
or via compromise, my email address with spammers. It has helped to reduce 
spam tremendously because I can turn off addresses when companies go out 
of business, become shitty, or simply don't care about security.

> I guess the existing measures are good enough for most people. And I suppose 
> if you're on the alert for spam, you're also more likely to catch other bad 
> stuff that's far worse.

Having run email servers since the '90s, I have some strong feeling about 
and some good experience with dealing with spam. The biggest problem is 
the webification of the Internet. You can get a domain and hosting, 
registered anonymousyly, hosted anonymously, with working reverse DNS, 
with anonymouns WHOIS information, with TLS certificates, DMARC and SPF, 
with practically no work at all, and so long as companies like Cloudflare, 
OVH and DigitalOcean will take your money and let you do whatever you 
want, with no real consequences and with complete anonymity, we'll have 
spam forever. They profit from this, and Google profits by people being 
afraid to have their email anywhere except the same cesspool where 
everyone else is, too.

The Venn diagram of extropians and technical people has plenty of overlap, 
but spam and email is probably not a real interest of most people here. 
But if anyone is interested in spam and email stuff, particularly 
self-hosting email, I'm writing up some articles and would love feedback. 
If you're interested, contact me off-list :)

John