.. title: Ways to avoid spam
.. slug: spam
.. date: 2003-09-02 23:50:38
.. tags: life

<p>
  This is an ongoing essay which will collect a series of links and
  thoughts on how to avoid spam.  Avoiding spam is a way of life, not
  something you think about today and then forget about for a few years.
</p>
<ul>
  <li><b><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/09/01/spam.chainletter/index.html">Don't have anything to do with chain letters</a></b><br>
      Personally, I'm not sure why anyone needs a reason to roll
      their eyes at chain letters--and I mean _all_ chain letters.
  <li><b>Don't put your email address on your web-site</b><br>
      I'm sure there are harvesters out there that can take an email
      address in some weird form (like willkg at bluesock dot org)
      and convert it to a regular email address.  However, it does
      raise the bar a bit.  Especially if you make up your own 
      syntax.
  <li><b>Don't reply to spam</b><br>
      When you reply to spam, you notify the spammer that someone is
      receiving email at that account.  It's better to just delete it.
  <li><b>Better yet, automatically reject email from known spam domains</b><br>
      There are domains from which I only get spam.  Things like
      247mail.com and crushlink.com.  My vote is to reject all email
      from those domains categorically.  For instance, you can set up
      sendmail to reject them.  This is different than filtering email
      in the sense that it tells the SMTP server trying to deliver the
      spam that you're not accepting email from them whatsoever.
  <li><b>Don't give people your email address</b><br>
      There are lots of forms out there for free whatevers and various
      contests.  If you can, set up an account that you can use for these
      purposes, but don't use your good email account.
  <li><b>Don't click on any spam links, don't buy anything from spam 
      email</b><br>
      This should be obvious.
  <li><b>Don't use an email client that renders HTML emails</b><br>
      Sometimes HTML emails will have links to images which get downloaded
      and tell the spammer that you are a real person reading the spam.
  <li><b>As a last resort, use a spam filter</b><br>
      I say this is a last resort because the mission is not to remove
      spam from your inbox, but rather to avoid getting spam altogether.
</ul>
<div class="update">
<p>
  Update 12/9/2004: There is no way to avoid spam anymore.  You can probably reduce
  it by not telling anyone anything, but every second that your email address
  exists increases the likelihood that you'll start getting spam.
</p>
</div>