A Simple Plan to Rid of All Your Spam (Without a Spam Filter)

Yes, it's true. It will take a little work and some compromises, but you can walk away from your spam problem without needing to buy a product like SpamButcher.

Setup a new email account

Spammers sometimes engage in "drive-by" spamming. This is where they send messages to every possible common email address at a domain.

The address rich@yourdomain.com is going to get spam.

The address richjames@yourdomain.com is a lot less likely to get spam.

If your address is with a major email provider - the problem of drive-by spam is massively amplified. Spammers take the time to randomly try common first-last name combinations.

If you're using an ISP like Earthlink - you'll need to go with something like richjames175@earthlink.com to be safe.

I generally recommend against free email services like Yahoo! or Hotmail.

Set your old email account to auto-respond

From: rich@yourdomain.com
To: sallysue4114@yahoo.com
Subject: Rich didn't get your message

Hi - this isn't really Rich - it's a computer.  

Rich has a new email address: richjames@yourdomain.com

If you resend your message to his new address - I'm sure
he'd be glad to hear from you.

You may still need to periodically delete any accumulated messages out of your old account. If you let messages pileup indefinitely - the account may run out of space. This could cause the auto-responder to stop working.

There is a slight chance that a spammer could receive your auto-responder email, and automatically include your new address in their list. You could do something clever like spelling out your address (richjames at yourdomain dot com) - but I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

Keeping your new email account free of spam (the important part)

The best way to eliminate spam email from your life is not to have it sent to you in the first place.

You need to look at all the ways spammers could have found your email address - and understand how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

You published your address online
Putting your email address on a website is a sure way to get spam.

SpamFreeze offers a free and easy way to let you put a "link" to your email address on a webpage instead of the address itself. This keeps you off spam lists, but lets humans easily get your address.

Other simple workarounds include putting your email address inside an image, or obfuscating it using javascript.

Drive-by spammers guessed your address
Since you've chosen a non-obvious email address for your new account this shouldn't be a problem.

You gave it to them
A lot of people end up getting spam because they gave their email address to a spammer. Sometimes they even agree to a "privacy policy" that allows them to be sent spam.

Did you "hit the monkey" and fill out the survey trying to get a free iPod? Well, that's the cause of your spam problem right there.

Often the situation is a bit more ambiguous. You may be required to give an email address to sign up for an investment seminar or other event. A job fair might sell your address to a job-hunting website. Two weeks later you're getting email that you "opted-in" for.

The solution is to use a "disposable" email account when giving an address to someone that you're even slightly concerned might turn around and spam you (this can include almost anyone).

There are lots of nifty, free disposable email services available - but you probably already have all the tools you need to setup a disposable account for yourself.

Most ISPs support several "aliases" per account. You can simply setup yourname100@yourdomain.com to forward to your main account. If it starts getting spam, simply delete yourname100@yourdomain.com alias, and create a new one - yourname101@yourdomain.com.

Usually the kind of people and services you're concerned about spamming you aren't ones you're particularly worried about staying in contact with. If you're really worried about missing someone's email - you can always setup an auto-responder like the one described earlier in this article.

Most disposable email services offer the advantage of maintaining a unique email address for each contact. This way you can determine exactly who is responsible for any spam you get, and shutdown just their associated email address.

You should also use a disposable email address when posting to the Usenet or any online forums.

Someone you know (mom?) gave your address to a spammer
We've all gotten an "e-card" at some point.

You get an email from mom containing a link leading to a webpage with dancing panda bears singing you "happy birthday."

Unfortunately, sometimes just viewing those cards makes you subject to the website's "privacy policy" - which states in a very roundabout way that you are going to be getting spam in the near future.

There are of course perfectly legitimate e-card sites - but I'm not going to try to sort out who's who.

The only way to deal with this (short of not giving your email address to mom) is to tell mom and your friends: Please don't send me any e-cards!

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