More details on ridding yourself of spam

SPAM IS INDEED becoming a tiresome problem; I agree with the findings of the study; I have my own domain name, so it allows me to create as many email addresses as I like. For instance, I could ask you to publish this mail on your site using "inquirer@mydomain.com" instead of P4man@mydomain.com. If I'd get any spam sent to this address, i'd know where they got it from. Each time I have to give my email address for something, I use one that I can track back to that site, and can add to my spamlist if required.

Either way, there are 2 very usefull free programs that may help to avoid spam. The first one is emailencoder. It generates a Javascript that allow someone to mail you, while the email address if pretty much invisible for email snoopers. Here is an example using my own email:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--document.write('<a href="&#32;&#109;&#97;
&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;&#98;&#111;
&#98;&#64;&#98;&#101;&#98;&#111;&#98;&#46;
&#98;&#101">mail me</a>');
// --> </script>

Put this in a HTML page, and it works, while your email address will remain hidden from robots. You may find this usefull to use -even on the INQ, as I can only imagine the quantities of spam you must be receiving. You can download emailencoder here:
http://dasolano.cjb.net/

A second tool I couldnt live without is Mailwasher. As many anti spam tools, it does a decent job of recognizing spam, building custom rules and filters, checking originators with lists of known spammers.. but the best part is the "bounce" feature which lets you generate a mailerror as if your email address didnt exist. Over time, this will reduce the ammount of spams you receive, as even spammer have no interest in sending mail to non existant email adresses. Here is an example of a bounce message generated by Mailwasher:

---------------------
From: System Administrator [postmaster@yourprovider.com]
To:
Subject:Undeliverable:

Your message
To: XYZ
Subject: dit is spam
Sent: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 16:38:26 +0100
did not reach the following recipient(s):

xyz@xyz.com on Mon, 20 Jan 2003 16:39:00 +0100
The e-mail account does not exist at the organization this message was sent to. Check the e-mail address, or contact the recipient directly to find out the correct address.
< mx1.mydomain.com #5.1.1>
---------------------

Mailwasher can be downloaded here: http://www.mailwasher.net/

Regards,
P4man

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