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I've been posting my e-mail addresses in plaintext all over the web for a good decade and a half. I still use those same addresses. I see no spam. Spam filters

I've been posting my e-mail addresses in plaintext all over the web for a good decade and a half. I still use those same addresses. I see no spam. Spam filters work. Why are people afraid of having their e-mail address out there without obfuscation?

hollerith 15y ago
Back when Usenet and mailing lists were the medium for most of the important conversations on the internet (that is, before 1994 or 1995) if you tried to post to Usenet or a mailing list with an obfuscated email address, people would complain (in replies to your post) if the admins running Usenet or the mailing list let your post through at all.
- DanBC 15y ago
  This was enforced with various levels of strictness. DE usenet is still pretty strict about not allowed munged email addresses, and only allowing you to use an address that you have control of. Other bits of Usenet would tolerate carefully munged From headers, but insist on empty or real Reply-to headers. (Reply to wasn't returned in a simple header retrieval, meaning it wasn't as often scraped. And it was optional. So either have it real, or don't have it at all.) Other bits didn't care what you did. Since poorly munged email addresses could cause considerable amounts of spam to be sent to that address it's fair enough to remind people not to inadvertently use another person's real email address. email filters then were not great; email addresses were scraped; downloading a lot of headers over lousy dial-up was annoying; and huge mailboxes was rare.
  - hollerith 15y ago
    >Other bits of Usenet would tolerate carefully munged From headers before 1994?
    - DanBC 15y ago
      No, sorry. I should have said it was later than 1994; probably around 1998.
joshu 15y ago
I get a boatload of spam daily. On gmail.
- pbreit 15y ago
  Did you turn off or otherwise adjust spam filtering? Otherwise, I don't believe you. At my last job (large, successful startup) I got the wildcard mail and got close to zero spam. Gmail spam filtering definitely works very well.
  - dmd 15y ago
    Insanely well. I've been posting publicly as dmd@3e.org for 16 years now, and at a few other addresses that forward to that for 22. All of that mail goes to gmail. My spam folder gets ~600 messages per day. I get a false-negative (spam in inbox) about once a month. I check for false-positives (ham in spambox) pretty regularly, but haven't ever found one.
    - Aethaeryn 15y ago
      I use Gmail, but I definitely get spam. I get false-positive spam all of the time (mailing lists I'm on have a decent chance of going to the spam box), and whenever a spammer has 'Google' in the email title, it has about a 60% chance of being a false-negative (i.e. showing up in the inbox). I also get false-negatives on spam when there is just a title and message body. Perhaps Gmail's spam filters are mostly based on how you train them, so people who receive more email get a better filter?
  - joshu 15y ago
    Nope. I don't mess with it. I am using GAFYD though.
    - hollerith 15y ago
      Very interesting! I wonder if spammers steer clear of @gmail.com addresses to prevent Google's algorithms from learning about their spam. (If so, they probably want to steer clear of GAFYD addresses, too, but maybe they don't know how to identify them).
nickgeiger 15y ago
I also remember reading a while back that trying to disguise your email with the "username (at) gmail (dot) com" approach is worse than just putting the raw email out there because it's not only just as easy to sniff out on the page, but you can also search for it in search engines: try searching for "at gmail dot com" vs "@gmail.com" in various search engines edit: source: http://varenhor.st/2010/01/email-at-domain-dot-com-is-making-a-spammers-job-easier/ http://varenhor.st/2010/01/email-at-domain-dot-com-is-making...
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Yes , interestingly enough the first assignment on the stanford NLP online course is too write an email harvester that finds those email addresses.

hollerith 15y ago

Back when Usenet and mailing lists were the medium for most of the important conversations on the internet (that is, before 1994 or 1995) if you tried to post to Usenet or a mailing list with an obfuscated email address, people would complain (in replies to your post) if the admins running Usenet or the mailing list let your post through at all.

DanBC 15y ago
This was enforced with various levels of strictness. DE usenet is still pretty strict about not allowed munged email addresses, and only allowing you to use an address that you have control of. Other bits of Usenet would tolerate carefully munged From headers, but insist on empty or real Reply-to headers. (Reply to wasn't returned in a simple header retrieval, meaning it wasn't as often scraped. And it was optional. So either have it real, or don't have it at all.) Other bits didn't care what you did. Since poorly munged email addresses could cause considerable amounts of spam to be sent to that address it's fair enough to remind people not to inadvertently use another person's real email address. email filters then were not great; email addresses were scraped; downloading a lot of headers over lousy dial-up was annoying; and huge mailboxes was rare.
- hollerith 15y ago
  >Other bits of Usenet would tolerate carefully munged From headers before 1994?
  - DanBC 15y ago
    No, sorry. I should have said it was later than 1994; probably around 1998.

joshu 15y ago

I get a boatload of spam daily. On gmail.

pbreit 15y ago
Did you turn off or otherwise adjust spam filtering? Otherwise, I don't believe you. At my last job (large, successful startup) I got the wildcard mail and got close to zero spam. Gmail spam filtering definitely works very well.
- dmd 15y ago
  Insanely well. I've been posting publicly as dmd@3e.org for 16 years now, and at a few other addresses that forward to that for 22. All of that mail goes to gmail. My spam folder gets ~600 messages per day. I get a false-negative (spam in inbox) about once a month. I check for false-positives (ham in spambox) pretty regularly, but haven't ever found one.
  - Aethaeryn 15y ago
    I use Gmail, but I definitely get spam. I get false-positive spam all of the time (mailing lists I'm on have a decent chance of going to the spam box), and whenever a spammer has 'Google' in the email title, it has about a 60% chance of being a false-negative (i.e. showing up in the inbox). I also get false-negatives on spam when there is just a title and message body. Perhaps Gmail's spam filters are mostly based on how you train them, so people who receive more email get a better filter?
- joshu 15y ago
  Nope. I don't mess with it. I am using GAFYD though.
  - hollerith 15y ago
    Very interesting! I wonder if spammers steer clear of @gmail.com addresses to prevent Google's algorithms from learning about their spam. (If so, they probably want to steer clear of GAFYD addresses, too, but maybe they don't know how to identify them).

nickgeiger 15y ago

I also remember reading a while back that trying to disguise your email with the "username (at) gmail (dot) com" approach is worse than just putting the raw email out there because it's not only just as easy to sniff out on the page, but you can also search for it in search engines: try searching for "at gmail dot com" vs "@gmail.com" in various search engines edit: source: http://varenhor.st/2010/01/email-at-domain-dot-com-is-making-a-spammers-job-easier/ http://varenhor.st/2010/01/email-at-domain-dot-com-is-making...

jiggy2011 15y ago
Yes , interestingly enough the first assignment on the stanford NLP online course is too write an email harvester that finds those email addresses.