Would you kindly stop spamming me? • Hacker News Board

Re: Would you kindly stop spamming me?

#31

Post by tempestn » Wed, May 21, 2014, 4:51 AM UTC

jawns wrote: post #20

tempestn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long until these spammy sites get wise to this (or how many already have) and start stripping off the tag portion of the address.

Assuming you run your own mail server, you don't necessarily have to use the +tag. You could use any schema you want. For instance, you might give out the address me.1408@yourdomain.com, which automatically expires in August 2014 (after which any mail sent to that address gets nuked).

Ya, I remember an amusing story from someone who would register to stores with @.com. Then he got a C&D letter from one of the stores demanding that he stop using their trademark in his email address.

Re: Would you kindly stop spamming me?

#32

Post by jamie_ca » Wed, May 21, 2014, 6:50 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #17

wpietri wrote: post #15

Allow me to plug tagging addresses when you give them out. The right way depends on your mail server, but if your email address is example@gmail.com, you can give out example+monster.com@gmail.com so that you know who's leaking your address. And when they do, you can set up a filter to junk anything. This is great even if you have hosted email. But it's even better if you run your own mail server. I now have dozens o…

Numerous email systems refuse to accept "+" as a valid email address character. Increasingly, I simply use mailinator for throwaways (and, of course, don't provide personal information).

I used to run my own mail server and just configured it to use . instead of + for the wildcard. Now I'm using gmail for my domain and just have a catchall rule that forwards it to me.

Re: Would you kindly stop spamming me?

#33

Post by wpietri » Wed, May 21, 2014, 2:05 PM UTC

techsupporter wrote: post #19

wpietri wrote: post #15

Allow me to plug tagging addresses when you give them out. The right way depends on your mail server, but if your email address is example@gmail.com, you can give out example+monster.com@gmail.com so that you know who's leaking your address. And when they do, you can set up a filter to junk anything. This is great even if you have hosted email. But it's even better if you run your own mail server. I now have dozens o…

The problem is that it is trivial to delete anything after (and including) the + from an e-mail address. I've had this happen when trying to use this approach. What I do instead is this: I have a subdomain of my regular domain, say "me.example.com." That subdomain is a catch-all; anything sent to it goes to my regular account at "example.com," though I have a Sieve rule to filter those messages to their own folder. C…

That can definitely be better if you have full control over a domain. But what stopped me from going that far is dictionary attacks. There are plenty of spammers who will just try hundreds of common-ish addresses at a domain.

I considered going even further and building something where I'd register each new address as I gave it out, but for now, just adding a tag on to my regular address has been good enough for me.

Re: Would you kindly stop spamming me?

#34

Post by wpietri » Wed, May 21, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #16

wpietri wrote: post #15

Allow me to plug tagging addresses when you give them out. The right way depends on your mail server, but if your email address is example@gmail.com, you can give out example+monster.com@gmail.com so that you know who's leaking your address. And when they do, you can set up a filter to junk anything. This is great even if you have hosted email. But it's even better if you run your own mail server. I now have dozens o…

I wonder how long until these spammy sites get wise to this (or how many already have) and start stripping off the tag portion of the address.

I've been doing this a long time, and I haven't caught anybody doing that yet. Generally spammers are a) not so smart, and b) all about volume.

The delimiter character on one system is a legitimate component on another, so stripping like that will fix some addresses but break others. Could they increase their total address count by 0.2% trying to strip tags? Possibly. Is it worth the effort? I doubt it. People who tag addresses are also the most likely to report spam and raise a ruckus.

Re: Would you kindly stop spamming me?

#35

Post by tempestn » Thu, May 22, 2014, 7:37 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #34

tempestn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long until these spammy sites get wise to this (or how many already have) and start stripping off the tag portion of the address.

I've been doing this a long time, and I haven't caught anybody doing that yet. Generally spammers are a) not so smart, and b) all about volume. The delimiter character on one system is a legitimate component on another, so stripping like that will fix some addresses but break others. Could they increase their total address count by 0.2% trying to strip tags? Possibly. Is it worth the effort? I doubt it. People who ta…

Good points, especially that last one. There's probably zero (or negative) benefit for them ending up in the inbox of anyone who would filter with tags.

Re: Would you kindly stop spamming me?

#36

Post by wpietri » Thu, May 22, 2014, 2:29 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #17

wpietri wrote: post #15

Allow me to plug tagging addresses when you give them out. The right way depends on your mail server, but if your email address is example@gmail.com, you can give out example+monster.com@gmail.com so that you know who's leaking your address. And when they do, you can set up a filter to junk anything. This is great even if you have hosted email. But it's even better if you run your own mail server. I now have dozens o…

Numerous email systems refuse to accept "+" as a valid email address character. Increasingly, I simply use mailinator for throwaways (and, of course, don't provide personal information).

For what it's worth, I use a dash, and I've never had a problem.

But yeah, throwaway email addresses are another good solution for some use cases. It doesn't cover everything, though. A lot of my spamtrap addresses are non-throwaway ones, where I actually want to stay in touch with the company. E.g., Adobe's compromise a while back.