Extracting E-mail Addresses

[eccentrictinkerer]

Just a note to remind everyone that including your e-mail address in posts should be avoided.

There is sophisticated software that will look at forum posts and extract e-mail addresses. The addresses are then sold to spam mongers. DAMHIKT

Best thing is to PM the intended person. If you absolutely need to include an address, use something like "usernameATyahoo.com" or" usernameNOSPAM@yahoo.com". You'll have to remind the recipient to edit out the extraneous stuff.

Another way is to get disposable e-mail addresses. Google "disposable email addresses".

My old address on my website was extracted and within days I received 1000's spam mailings.

Good Luck.

[Black wallnut]

Been there had that done to me. I've heard that is some nations there are actually people whose day job is to troll for email addys and or websites that they can Spam. I don't know if this is true or not but I've been spammed quite a bit lately. My website also has been spammed the same as this forum.

[Ed62]

But that brings up a question. How will I know if someone in Nigeria is holding a fortune that legally belongs to me if they can't get my e-mail addy?

Ed

[gsmittle]

But that brings up a question. How will I know if someone in Nigeria is holding a fortune that legally belongs to me if they can't get my e-mail addy?

Ed

Easy! They'll get your addy from the guys who sold you the "herbal male enhancement" capsules.

g.

[smorris]

I found it easier to just block all networks coming out of asia pacific, South America, middle east. That accounts for over 50K emails dropped per day on my server which services 3 accounts for my family.

[milanuk]

I ended up going the commercial route via Spam Arrest - a server-based challenge-response system which requires senders to verify that a *human* is sending me an email, not a program. Cut my spam levels down from an average of 200 per day (ranging between 150 & 300) to maybe one every couple weeks... apparently somebody (spammer) is occasionally stupid enough to verify *their* email address to send me a Viagra add or whatever. Now I just need to find a way to submit *their* address to the spam-bots...

How the heck do you get 50k emails *per day*?!? Seems like that would get you dropped like a hot rock by most ISPs...

[smorris]

How the heck do you get 50k emails *per day*?!? Seems like that would get you dropped like a hot rock by most ISPs...

I have a business account that allows me to run my own servers with a static IP and no hassles from the provider. My job requires me to have that.

[milanuk]

Gotcha. I have a small website via a Yahoo! small business account as well, and I administer a non-profit club website as well. I had to turn off the 'catch-all' feature where anything spammers sent to my domain, even if it was to a non-existant user, got forwarded to one of the admin addresses - which ultimately dumped back into *my* inbox.

That ixnayed a lot of crap right there, but I'm reasonably active on a number of forums - moderator on some, etc. and participate in various hobby support mailing lists, etc. I've tried the disposable email accounts, even using ones coded for specific forums (PITA to keep track of) so I could supposedly tell who/where my email was 'getting out' at (as if it wasn't already out in the wild already). The spam filters I had were turned up so high that I got a lot of false positives - good mail lost in the spam boxes - so I had to spend a certain amount of time sifting through all the viagra/cialis ads, nigerian scams, and other various BS that I didn't want *anyway* just to make sure I didn't lose anything important.

For me, it was worth the couple bucks a month to just re-route everything through SpamArrest. They have some features such as allowing you to update your mail filters of 'known good' addresses from your friends via your email address book (depends on the mail client). Initially I had some problems where a handful of spam every day was still getting through - turns out the spammers were forging the headers so it looked like the email was 'from me', 'to me' - and therefore bypassed the filters. Luckily that was a check box click away. About the only issues I have now is the occasional legitimate person who wants to send me an email, but isn't technically competent enough to figure out the challenge-response verification (yet they somehow manage to tie their shoes and drive to work unaided...) so once in a while I'll have to dig into my pile of 'unverified' emails and search for a couple to authorize.... otherwise, life is good again.

Monte

[crokett]

I did the easy thing and just got a gmail address. Now I never see spam. I can't remember the last time I did see any.

[TheRic]

I have several gmail accounts, I will have to say I have never seen any spam in there. I don't use them much, so I don't need to check spam section for false positives, so I can't say what it's like in that department.

[gary]

my email address is

president@whitehouse.gov

please feel free to email me all you want. :-)