Journal fractaltiger's Journal: Just saving my comment reply about 100 spams a day here...
[Posted on thread http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/14/0158228&tid=]
I certainly get 75% of that much daily spam (an email address from 1997). In part, it came from college forwards and my naive signing up for those "funny" sites that forwarded jokes and random personality tests.
Mostly on freshman year, as I realized what was happening and began to ignore forwards. My college address, well known by my friends, was not as badly affected but around junior year it started showing signs of spam, but the Signal to noise ratio was pretty good. When I started seeing my college domain faked, I realized it was a bad thing. Coincidentally, all my email forwarding from the college ceases today, and I'm relieved and hopeful that at least some emails will stop dead halfway at the expired address.
I am guilty of having placed my address up on geocities back in 97 where the spambots got it for a good year or so. Other than that, I always obfuscate it or don't list it at all.
You know what? I have an unlisted address that gets spam. How? it's a 5 letter [screename --sans the domain] combination. My yahoo one is [edit: 7] letters. Lots of spammers use dictionary attacks and brute force generation. Verdict? I should place numbers and underscores [and use longer screennames, like my
Just a thought for anyone who might benefit. I'm glad I could find the exact thread to post this.
