Spam
There are many ways to protect yourself from spam. First, don't post your e-mail address publicly unless you must. My e-mail address gets an incredible amount of spam, (something which many webmasters put up with). It was changed to an email form, as I simply can't wade through all the spam anymore. For those without a website, common sense applies. Don't post your e-mail address anywhere! E-mail spammers look at news groups and bulletin boards, they search deja news constantly, and also run other web searches. And don't send a remove notice to these guys, even when it says to. In most cases, all that does is confirm that you have a valid e-mail address, and you just get more spam. Simply delete any spam.
Don't put your e-mail address in your browser, there are many harvesting programs that can pick up your e-mail address when you visit their webpage. If you run Netscape, go into the advanced section in preferences and un-check the option to send your email address as anonymous password. That gets rid of a lot of the problem, or if you want to be mean, and don't use Netscape for e-mail, put a bogus e-mail address in there. Make sure it is bogus - something like 36q4p37@gd9uga.com - so some real person doesn't get spammed. You can do the same thing in MSIE, as long as you don't use their e-mail. Please don't use Outlook anyway, at least until they tighten up their security holes. MSIE will allow you to use an outside mail client such as Pegasus or Eudora Lite.
For webmasters, there are ways to get around having your web address spammed into uselessness. I started looking into this because of my own problems. I've decided to use a CGI script to let people talk to me from the web. Java scripts can also be used, or you can just print the address in English, with no clickable link. For example: mine would be thewebmistress at awebspace dot com. Unfortunately, this does make your users work harder! You can also drop email completely and use a message board or something of that sort (just warn people not to post their e-mail addresses, or they will get spammed).
Malicious E-Mail
There is also such a thing as malicious spam, more commonly called "mail-bombing" (no, nothing like "The Unabomber"). This often happens to spammers in response to spam, but it can also happen if you get someone upset at you, and have been injudicious enough to give them your email address. There are several things that happen. You might have someone send you a 5 Megabyte file, which will lock up most mailboxes, or someone might just decide to subscribe you to a listserver. A listserver will mail you all the posts on a particular bulletin board, and some can get 500 messages a day. Generally they subscribe you by signing up with your email address, doing something called 'spoofing', which makes it look as if the address they are writing from is your address. For the listserv types, about the only thing you can do is set up a spam block. For the big files, you need the help of your ISP tech support - most ISPs will automatically reject files over a certain length, so this isn't used as often as it was in the "old days". If you have someone around who can translate full headers (the detailed To/from fields that your server sees), they can often tell you who did it. If they are really good, they might help you get revenge!
Private e-mail
The best way to make your mail private, assuming your main concern is other people around you, is to get an account at one of the various web-based e-mail providers. You can send and receive your messages from the web, have your own account and password, and you don't have to worry about the boss finding out you are job hunting (as long as you delete your browser cache). I have a list of some of these places below, these are ones I use or have used and like. In most cases you do have to put up with banner ads, but the email won't cost you a dime, and the ads are fairly easy to ignore.
For those with more serious concerns about email privacy, there are anonymous remailers (these are outgoing only - the sort of thing you might want to use for whistle-blowing, or other activities that could put you in danger). You can also use PGP or other encryption programs to ensure no one but the intended recipient(s) can read your mail. I don't use these, so have no real comments about them.
Use at your own risk (as in anything). If I get seriously negative feedback on any of these, I will take them down, assuming I get some proof that it's legitimate (sometimes one does get employees of one group making bogus complaints about another).Web based e-mail
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Chek.com
- Free web-based email. Offers a large number of interesting e-mail domains to choose from, so you can have a bit of identity with names like xxx@eatmydirt.com or yyy@mummymail.com or zzz@bored.com. I personally couldn't resist goddessmail.com. It offers all the usual options for web mail. They also offer businesses e-mail outsourcing, and are interested in talking to domain owners who might want to offer their own web-based mail. (I'm not sure of the details, but I suspect you have to let them use your domain name in return - I'm investigating...anyone want email at awebspace.com?).
- FirstName Mail
- Another one I couldn't resist. You can choose from 500 first names. I now have yet another email address at kathysmail.com. Nice fast mail interface as well, and all the usual options. Sent a letter to their support too, and got a pretty quick answer! All in all, I'm very pleased with them. So, if you'd like to have mail with your name, a bit of personality in your email address, have at it!
- Hotmail
- Probably the biggest one on the net - every one knows these guys. Good mail interface, but you get sent to the MSN home page when you log off. They also tend to be a spam magnet, being the first and biggest. I just recently went to my one hotmail account after ignoring it for 2 months and had over 500 spam messages. They have all the features, but can get overloaded at times. They were the first one I used, but I rarely use them anymore because of the spam problem.
- Yahoo! Mail
- Another of the big ones, I have found it quite reliable. They have pretty much the same features as Hotmail. They also get a bit overloaded sometimes. Generally reliable, and somewhat less of a spam-magnet than Hotmail, but it still gets its share.
- Eudoramail
- A free email site from the makers of Eudora. I find it amazing that they don't offer pop-mail as well, since Eudora Lite is one of the two best free pop-mail programs out there, but so it goes! Not quite as many pretty features as Hotmail and Yahoo. They are a lot less overcrowded than Hotmail and Yahoo!, so you have a better chance of getting your favourite nickname. Also, so far, I haven't had any spam from this one except that redirected from my own site.
- ZWallet - something different
- This one I just had to mention although it is not quite up yet, they intend to start paying - on a first-join, first-paid basis - on July 15, 2000. I found them while looking for pay-to read email sites. They pay you for reading and writing your own email. As near as I can tell, they are selling ads by impression (per page view), and decided to pay back their customers some of their profit. I've redirected all my spammed accounts to them and, so far, they seem to be free of any spam other than my forwards! They also have a pay-to-read targeted e-mail plan which you can join (or not, as you please). It occurred to me that those who like to get pay-to-read email might want to join several plans and have it all sent to that email address! And if you just have to read and write a lot of e-mail every day, why not make some money while you are at it?
Safe and Anonymous E-mail
- Ziplip.com
- Users are given a personal ZipLip account from which they can receive, compose, and send secure email and attachments. Free at present.
- SafeMessage
- The newest offering from AbsoluteFuture. "SafeMessage provides a high-security, limited-persistence, guaranteed-status messaging service and is aimed at the growing market of people who like the convenience and speed of email but are concerned about its security." Presently under development - should be finished sometime in summer 2000. Price, if any, unknown. I'm keeping an eye on them. (obviously, haven't tried them).
- HushMail
- Web-based email encryption - claims to be user-friendly, I find encryption puzzling, so if it is - that's great! I haven't used it, would appreciate comments. Free.
Anonymous Remailers
All anonymous e-mailers are outgoing only. For reasons that should be obvious when one thinks about it. And many, if not most, of them are pseudo-anonymous. You are anonymous to the recipient, but NOT to the anonymous re-mailer. Which is just as well, I don't want people able to send terrorist threats in perfect anonymity. In short - you are anonymous unless the law comes after you.- World Wide Web Anonymous Remailer
- Run by the Global Internet Liberty Campaign. Free.
- Anonymous Remailer
- Send through up to 3 other anonymous remailers - makes you darn near impossible to trace, especially if you use several countries to remail through. Free
- Anonymous Remailer FAQ
- Read this before using an anonymous remailer - has excellent information
E-mail and File Privacy
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
Protect privacy of electronic mail and files. Available for most machines.
- PGP® or Pretty Good Privacy®
- This is a powerful cryptographic product that enables people to securely exchange messages, and to secure files, disk volumes and network connections with both privacy and strong authentication. Yes - this is the one the US government has been making all the fuss about. These versions are only for those in the US and Canada (freeware). Also has links to several FAQs on PGP
- International PGP
- PGP for those not in the US or Canada. I'm not sure of what the encryption level is on these, but even with the silly US government restrictions, it should be good enough for most things.
Vengeance on spammers
- Mega-Zine - Let's stop those email spiders
- For those with web sites! Don't like spiders? This little CGI script is a spider-trap for the spiders that go about taking addresses from your web pages. It provides about 2000 fake random addresses - doesn't do anything but slow the spiders down a bit - but then your unwanted email sender has to either go through and remove them from his/her list by hand, or deal with 2000 bounced e-mails. Revenge is sweet.
- Spam bouncer
- This cute little program lets you send fake bounced email back to spammers. A bit naughty - but useful if you get a lot of spam from the same people.