Re^3: contact details

I'm using my handle "CountZero" for years now and I do have a e-mail address "CountZero@???????" (that I never use), but I cannot remember ever having received spam on this e-mail address.

One good trick to avoid spam is to refrain as much as possible from using a real e-mail address when subscribing to discussion groups, ...

I found 10 Minute Mail a very good solution. It makes you an email address which is valid for 10 minutes only (without going through the whole administration of opening a Yahoo, hotmail, gmail, ... account) and that is usually long enough to receive the password or activation string.

Devon Hillard --who runs this service-- has the following interesting comments:

When I launched 10minutemail.com, tons of forum admins decried the idea. They screamed that it would let spammers on to their forums, and that they wouldn't sell e-mail lists to spammers, etc...
A month goes by, and let's see what we have. My server used to get around 200-300 e-mail a day. In the past week it averaged 60,000-70,000 e-mail a day. Virtually all of those were to old (expired) 10minutemail.com accounts. Presumably virtually all spam.
70,000 a day!? This proves that the average person simply CAN'T trust a random site or forum with their real e-mail address. Are there some forums/sites that are trustworthy? Sure! Does the average net user have any ability to tell with certainty if a given site or forum will sell their e-mail address or spam them direction? Unfortunately not.
This drives home the importance of the service.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

Comment on Re^3: contact details

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Re^4: contact details by psini (Deacon) on Jul 17, 2008 at 10:07 UTC
I use a similar approach but, being lazy, I don't like going to 10minutemail.com to activate a mail address each time I need one. So I got my mail server redirect any mail addressed to myname-yyyy-mm-dd@mydomain to myname@mydomain, as long as the date in the address is that of today. Don't ask me how I did it, I'm a programmer, not a sysadmin ;-) Rule One: "Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man."	[reply]
Re^5: contact details by CountZero (Bishop) on Jul 17, 2008 at 16:25 UTC
Hey, nice trick! One more reason why I MUST have my own mailserver. CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James	[reply]


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