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Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Another serving of anti-spam
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
E-mail spam has interested me for a long time. Almost everyone hates the stuff and dozens of companies offer solutions.
But nothing really works. You can slow down spam but it’s almost impossible to stop.
The most foolproof method I know is to use software that requires senders to prove that they are humans (hey spammers aren’t human). It’s called challenge and response. You send an e-mail to me. My anti-spam software automatically sends one back to you before delivering your e-mail. You’re asked to copy down some letters and numbers and send that back. The notion is that a spammer - sending out hundreds of thousands of e-mails - can’t do that. Once all that happens, your e-mail is delivered.
It works but it’s sure clunky. I know - at work where I literally get hundreds of e-mails a day - I just don’t take the time to deal with that extra hurdle.
One of the latest anti-spam technologies - you can read about it here - uses still a different technique. You are offered ‘disposable’ e-mail addresses. So when you post on a blog, or order a widget, you use a disposable address, not your own. Mail to that address is delivered to your real e-mail account. But when the spammers start using that address, you discard that disposable address.
I see how it works - and the link is to an article that raves over the service - but I doubt that I’d go to all that trouble. I hate spam but - for me - it’s another case of the cure being worse than the disease. But you may see things differently so take a look at the article. And, as always, if you have tips on avoiding spam, I’d be glad for you to post them.
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