Fighting Spam - Part 2

In a post to the Time Matters AIC Solutions Forum, Keely Dunn describes an effective method for using Disposable Email Addresses (DEAs) for corresponding with companies and places you do not trust. Whether you switch to that approach, requiring you to abandon your current Email address, or you purchase state-of-the-art Spam fighting software, as I recommend, you will invest your valuable time and a little bit of money. So it makes sense to understand the consequences of each approach and what the statistics show. For all of us Time Matters users, the good news is that both approaches work very well with Time Matters Email.

This discussion assumes you have read my earlier article, found at: Fighting Spam

Protection of AIC Solutions Group against Spammers

Spammers can't harvest your Email address from the AIC Solutions Forum archive if you leave it out of the text of your message as Keely suggests. In addition, the archive is accessible only to registered Time Matters customers; it is not exposed to the entire Internet. Email addresses are not displayed on archived posts unless they are included in signature blocks. I include an Email address in my signature block because I want all of you to be able to reach me if you have a question. So far, I have received no Spam at that Email address and have an effective defense against it if my Email address were to be compromised.

Time Commitment to Maintain Antispam Software

I manually flag less than five bad Emails per day. With one click I submit a bad Email to the MailWasher collaborative, doing my small part in the fight against Spam. My daily volume is currently 54 good Emails and 349 bad Emails. MailWasher automatically screens out all but 4 or 5 of the bad ones. It does so without sweeping good ones out with the bad. I no longer consider Spam a problem in our office. That could change, but so far, MailWasher's multiple weapons are working.

To get to this point, I downloaded MailWasher's free version and tried it out. Later I bought the Pro version for $37 and the collaborative reporting service for $7 per year. You can buy MailWasher Pro for $20 using the code on my Fighting Spam webpage, above. (We don't sell it and don't make any money from MailWasher sales.)

During the first couple of weeks of using the Learning feature, I clicked some unmarked Emails as bad and some unmarked Emails as good. Now I'm down to marking fewer than five per day. I still glance through the pink highlighted Emails looking for good ones among those marked as bad, but I don't know why I bother. No good ones end up there.

Disposable Email Addresses

I have hedged my bets by using disposable Email addresses as Keely recommends. When I post here or anywhere, I use an Email address specific to the service or group of services. Because MailWasher Pro is so effective, I have not paid any attention to my DEA's. In the future, if I need to, I can retire some that have attracted Spam, like those used to register Web site domain names.

But I don't see disposable Emails as a panacea. Publishing an Email address and getting it into people's address books takes time and effort. Most lawyers want to get their names out. If you use disposable addresses in public places that can attract Spam, you face a dilemma:

Do I dispose of my disposable Email address once it gets some Spam?
or:
Do I keep reviewing Email it receives because, along with Spam, a few potential clients may see it somewhere and use it?

By using a sophisticated, multi-weapon antispam product like MailWasher, you don't face that dilemma if you are willing to flag 4 or 5 Emails out of 400.

What If Someone Leaks Your Real Email Address?

Heads up. There is one, big scary risk in relying on carefully guarded personal and business Emails for clients and friends instead of on antispam software. What if someone leaks your Email address?

Many of your clients and friends are bound to be using risky Email software from Microsoft. If any one of them fails to apply the regular updates to Windows, Outlook and their antivirus software, they could leak your real Email address. I have received a number of worm-laden Emails from clients who had me at the top of their Email address book (Anderson starts with "A") and were attacked by worms that grabbed their collection of Email addresses.

You also must take care not to release your "real" Email address accidentally. You need to take care that it does not appear in Emails that you send to people who are not on your trusted list. That means selecting different Email addresses for the From line on your outgoing Emails. Keely Dunn describes a way to use a service to do that, but you will need to follow the directions, especially when you are on the road, away from your laptop, accessing Email via a Web interface.

If your real Email address does escape, then you face the time-consuming prospect of notifying all the most important people, your clients and friends, of a second change-of-address. And you will probably want to monitor the old addresses anyway.

Let's face it, if you are not using effective antispam software, you are going to:

1) Miss some messages from people who just don't act on your address change, or
2) Plow through Spam without advanced technological assistance, or
3) Do both of the above.

Keywords: key_Communication