Yes, I’ve finally reached my limit on spam.
I use Apple Mail, which is a great little program: it “learns” what junk is and stores it in a Junk folder, which you can peruse at your leisure—although, with 300+ messages going in there per day, I didn’t peruse it too often.
(Eventually we’re going to get a more robust mail server, which hopefully will weed a lot more of this crap out, but for the moment I’m relying on other tricks.)
However, I was still getting 100+ messages in my In Box every day, most of which were spam but were, for one reason or another, not getting flagged as such. So I borrowed a trick from Darin’s mail rules and said, If the mail’s sender is not in my address book, put it in the box “Unknown Sender.” I do have to check this box more often, but at least my In Box isn’t quite as heavily burdened.
If anyone is sending me mail about this site (or the Calvin Klein Skirt) though, I may miss it, depending on what the Subject line is. (I suggest avoiding “Hi.”) So I said to myself, “Self, you have as many e-mail addresses as you want. It is time to set up a dedicated e-mail address for people who actually want to talk to YOU but whom you don’t know yet.”
So: if you’d like to drop me a line, please mail it to:
n k a -a t- n o b o d y – k n o w s – a n y t h i n g . c o m
Yes, you have to type it in, and yes, you have to figure out what part of the e-mail address gets replaced by the character found at shift-2. But if you really want to talk to me, this is the way.
Or you could use Mailblocks (http://www.mailblocks.com) as I do. It takes the “unknown sender” idea one step further and allows people to have their messages moved into your inbox by doing something spammers refuse to do (but force you to do) which is invest a few seconds of human attention.
Using Mailblocks means I can sprinkle my e-mail address all over the web and still never get any spam. If an unknown sender writes to me, they get a challenge message back asking them to prove they’re a human and not a spambot. If they do, their message gets through and so do all future messages from them.
Anyone who wants to try it out can e-mail me at heydan@post.harvard.edu and you’ll get a challenge message back if you’re not already in my e-mail address book.
I’ve done OK using Spamcop, but apparently I’m a bloody-minded zealot even by dedicated anti-spammers’ standards.
Another fun way to spam-proof writing out your email address is to play with the formatting so that it looks meaningless to a robot, but meaningful to a human. tags are great if you don’t want to mess with a table.
nka nobody anything com
at -knows- dot
Crap. I used ‘preview’, which changed my html-friendly code into an actual tag.
Anyway, “<pre> tags are great if you don’t want to mess with a table.”
Dear Diane,
Just to let you know that Rashid and I are following the happenings in the States very closely. I am sure that you have received loads of mail from your ex friends of JIS. Believe me, we are all one hundred percent behind you and hope and pray that your brother will be elected the next president. Rashid and I listened to the Debate last Thursday – well, the polls speak for itself. Oh, dear, you are so busy, I will not take up more of your busy and valuable time.
Hope to hear from you one day, may the American people get the right inspiration in the weeks to come.
You know that we have three children – all married in the States, so Rashid and I are somewhat linked, non? Particularly Rosadah remembers you so well and would like to get in contact with you to tell you that she is with you all the way!
Take care and lots of strength in your incredible battle. May all the better judgement prevail !
With our warmest greetings,
Rashid and Rochana
Dear Rashid and Rochana —
I am 100% sure that you have confused me with someone else. For one thing, I definitely don’t have a brother, let alone one who’s running for President. (If John Kerry were my brother, you think I’d be writing a blog? I’d be borrowing money!)
Didn’t see any cialis or viagra tags, so I can’t see how this is spam, but…
hey are diane patterson from country fair??? met me a couple of years ago we use to be in contact but i lost my cell phone got a new one with same old #503 330 6581 i would like to talk to you more if your you ??? lets jam some music sometime??
No, sorry – I’m not that Diane Patterson!
Why does nobody-knows-anything.com sometimes send a visitor directly to my blog? What is that all about?
I don’t know, Todd. I don’t think I’ve ever linked to your blog, but perhaps I have. Perhaps someone has us in a list and after visiting me they visit you.