600,426,974,379,824,381,952 Ways to Spell Viagra

It also explains why spam filter heuristics is currently very very flawed.

The Japanese would have to spell it "biagura."

An earnest appeal to our resident computer genius:

Craven, if you could invent a truly effective spam filter that automatically returned all prescription drug, gambling, mortgage refinancing, dating service and porno spam to its originators, you would never have to worry about money again. Not to mention, you'd have our undying gratitude. And a kiss from me, personally.

Well, as alluring as it is, there's no real easy way to filter this without changing the structure of email or flaging a lot of false positives as spam.

But on email accounts that I do not want to receive spam on I get no spam. I avoid the use of filters and the way to avoid spam is through selection of what email to use and how to use it.

Here's the (widely known) secret:

Register a domain just for emails. This way it's not a freebie that will be sold to mailing lists.

Spammers might find the domain (if it's not widely used they'll probably not target it).

When they find it, they might try guessing at the emails e.g. "[email protected]. [email protected]...."

There are some that are pretty much guaranteed. E.g. webmaster@domain.. and info@domain... and sales@domain...

So avoid those. You might get guest spammed.

Then you create several email accounts under this domain. E.g. business, personal and spam accounts (using different names for them.

Now here's the kicker, you can spoof any email name on that domain. So you can give a custom email to each person.

So say you have a friend named sally. You give sally your special email address for her:

[email protected]

You forward it to one of the three accounts that you check. Now if you get spam on that account you can shut it off. Whenever you register at a website you do the same. Say you register on able2know. You create [email protected] and forward it to the spam box (generally forward all the site registrations to the volume/spam account).

There are other tips, like stay the hell off of mass mailings (yell at your friends who put you on their joke list) don't put your email on a webpage and such.

Anywho, the real secret is controlling the domain. If you use a free (or paid) account with a stipulated domain and don't have the tools to do what I said, you will get spam.

People who host with me never get spam unless they neglect to take those steps. And if they fail, there's a configurable filter they can use to take that last step.

Anywho, it sounds more complicated than it is. I get several hundred emails a day without a piece of spam (on the account sthat I designate for spam I get many many of em, but I only on the accounst that I select to be spam boxes).

I have another simple way. Just have one e-mail account that is just for spam. Whenever I go anywhere that asks for a registration, I use my junk e-mail address. I never register my other e-mail account with anyone, EVER. I almost never get spam on that address. The only minor aggravation is that every couple months I have to empty the junk one, which is LOADED with crap.

Thanks, Craven & kicky.

So....I should cancel out my current e-mail accounts and open new ones under different names? If I do that, I'll have to print new business cards as well.