4 ms·
I used to do this. The amount spam of mail I received to mailbox names I had never used started to dwarf my actual email. This is apparently made worse because
by daxelrod 9y ago
I used to do this. The amount spam of mail I received to mailbox names I had never used started to dwarf my actual email. This is apparently made worse because spammers take the fact that these addresses will receive mail as a signal that they're valid, causing them to send more mail to them.
A couple of years ago, maintaining the blacklist passed the point where this was a viable technique for me.
- jjnoakes 9y agoThis is why you might consider maintaining a white list or white pattern instead.
- rhizome 9y agoEasier to use sub-/plus-addressing rather than maintaining a list.
- jjnoakes 9y agoThat seems like a white pattern to me.
- rhizome 9y agoIf only delivering mail to existing email addresses is a white pattern, sure.
- jjnoakes 9y agoI don't follow. If I configure me.example.com to accept emails matching the pattern "me<anything>mail42@me.example.com", then I can generate as many on-the-fly unique emails as I want, without maintaining any lists, and without catch-all forwarding of random spam to my inbox. If I use me+anything@me.example.com, I get the same exact feature, but the downside is "+anything" is recognized by some and either disallowed or used to generate more patterns. If I use subdomains (like anything@me.example.com) I have the spam issue. With a white pattern scheme, you can choose your own pattern (so sites can't really catch on), not have to maintain any lists, and avoid spray-and-pray spam.
- daxelrod 9y agoA white pattern is an idea that I'd considered but never actually tried implementing. It has the advantage of being able to spontaneously create email addresses when signing up for things, while still blackholing most guessed addresses. I like this idea a lot.