On January 24, 2004, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates famously announced that, by 2006, "spam will be solved." He was right. As I write this, it's still 2006 and I've solved my spam problem. (Gates is still working on his.) Now I happily get e-mail on my CrackBerry, and never, EVER, get spam. Here's how I did it. (Link goes to my Computerworld column)
8:34 AM * PERMALINK * 5 comments
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Comments:
Wow! That's great! I don't think I can afford to use SpamArrest though but thanks for sharing this very informative idea.
Sounds great that you can finally block all spam from reaching you. I'm trying to figure out how to stop spammers from sending spam via my site's contact form.
I always love hearing about success stories against spam.
Thanks again!
Interesting, I was just reorganizing my setup yesterday.
http://www.andrewgrant.org/2006/12/24/happy-holidays-from-gmail.html
'I used the Reply-to address feature (Settings/Accounts) to have replies to messages sent to mike.elgan@elgan.com (and forwarded to Gmail) look as though they are coming from my public e-mail address'
You might want to check what people actually see. Regardless of the reply-to address, GMail is still listed in the mail headers as the from address.
Some programs, including Outlook, then display 'From blah@gmail.com on behalf of Mike Elgan' in the message pane, and when someone replies the gmail address is included in the text. It's damn ugly :(
I like the sound of SpamArrest, a the moment I use Spam Assassin which removes 99% of email before it's forwarded to Google. Interestingly, all the spam in my GMail spam folder is addressed to my gmail address. I have no idea why this is, I have NEVER entered this address anywhere nor used it as a 'reply-to'.
Hi Mike:
So, what happens when some spammer sends spam, containing a forged "From:" email address belonging to some unfortunate somewhere else out there on the net, to your private email address?
Under those challenge-response setups with which I'm familiar, the C/R system will respond by sending a challenge to this forged email address. This inflicts much of the burden of dealing with your spam, on others, specifically upon those who own the forged email addresses used in the spam that you receive. It shifts the cost of dealing with the spam that you receive to these others whose email addresses are forged in the spam that you receive. It is net abuse.
Challenge-response is invariably abusive of the net because the challenge-response system cannot determine with any degree of reliability, that the email address on the "From:" line in the email is valid (or not valid).
When you use SpamArrest to block your spam, what you're actually doing is to unload the responsibility for controlling what comes in to your inbox to unrelated third parties. Worse, given the fact that almost all spam is sent using forgeries, almost all of the spam that you're not seeing you're now sending to innocent victims. Gee, thanks. Given that you seem to think that sort of behavior is OK, would you mind if I sent all my e-mail to you so you can tell me what's spam and what's not? If it's not, why do you think it's OK for SpamArrest to do the same thing?
Please don't promote such an anti-social product. Thanks.
What would you think if your neighbour started to throw their garbage to your garden since they don't want to deal with it properly?
You wouldn't like it? Well, this is exactly the way you're dealing with the spam you get, throwing it to your neighbour's garden.
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