Tim's Tech Tips

Question:

"Tim, 


I have used the e-mail address provided by my ISP for years, and have been battling an ever more daunting tsunami of tspam, since the day I began! Finally, it has become too much! I'm dumping my ISP's e-mail, and I'm going to make a new one... but I don't want to lose touch with any of my friends. 
How can I make sure that my new inbox stays free of spam, and that my old friends can still get a hold of me?"

Click "Read more" to see the answer.

Answer:

Creating a new e-mail address can be a hassle sometimes, especially if you're not sure how to notify anyone who might e-mail you about your new address. I can certainly provide you with some tips that should keep your inbox clean, and keep your friends in touch.
 

• Switch to Gmail. Never look back. 
• On your old e-mail account, see if they have a feature for "email forwarding" which would allow you to forward all messages from your old account, to your new account for a limited time, like 3 months. 
  • If you don't have email forwarding on your old address, and you switch to Gmail, see if your old one has "pop3" access. If so, you can configure Gmail to download messages that are sent to your old account, and put them in your gmail inbox or a separate folder. 
  • Make sure you turn off forwarding/pop3 after a short while, because they are indiscriminate. They will forward spam just the same as everything else, and you certainly don't want that clogging up your shiny new inbox!
• On the old account, enable "vacation responder". This is a feature included in almost every email account which allows you to respond automagically whenever someone sends you an e-mail. In this case, you can say something to the tune of: "I have switched to a new e-mail address. Please update your address book to: Tim_Is_Awesome -at- gmail.com."
  • It is important not to have your new e-mail address in the proper format included in the vacation responder, otherwise you're letting all the spammers know your new email too! They usually use automated email sniffers to locate text in the format of an email address so you should be ok using "-at-" instead of "@". 
• Make use of "Plus+Addressing". 
  • A +address is your email address "plus" a tag. For example, if your email address was "youremail@gmail.com" and you wanted to register on Tim's Tech Tips, you might use something like this: "youremail+T3@gmail.com". If Tim then starts spamming you with Viagra ads (that bastard) then simply add a rule that anything sent to "youremail+t3@gmail.com" will go to your spam folder automatically.
  • When registering on a website, always use a plus address that tells you where it was entered. If someone starts sending penis-pill advertisements to "youremail+fark@gmail.com", then you can be fairly sure that they got your email from fark. This also allows you to easily filter this sort of message. 
• Be mindful of how spammers get your e-mail address
  • When posting your e-mail in a forum post, on a public board, or in some sort of comments, always keep in mind that spammers use automated email sniffing programs which look for any text on the internet (through a search engine) in the format of an e-mail. For example: "*@*.com" (if "*" were a wildcard)  would return hundreds of millions of results on the internet where people had posted their e-mails.
  • Some people, when posting on a forum or somewhere else that's public, type their email in an obfuscated manner, such as: "youremail [at] yahoo [dot] com". This will USUALLY work, but it's a simple matter of changing the search string that would allow a spammer to find your address. +addressing would probably be more effective.
• Click "Unsubscribe". 
  • Sometimes clicking "unsubscribe" on an e-mail will do nothing more than let the spammers know you're reading their emails.
    However, if you legitimately did sign up on a website (for example, amazon.com) and it is a legitimate company that's sending you email you don't like, you are much better off unsubscribing than marking them as spam. 
• If it's crap, don't just delete it, mark it as spam. 
  • Inevitably, spam will get through to your inbox. When it does, don't just archive/delete it; mark it as spam!
• Un-check that box
  • Signing up on a website? Don't just blow through that registration form... Have a quick look over it for any check boxes that are ticked automatically... and un-tick them. Sure, you may like the site enough to register... but do you like it enough to get their spam?

Have your own tips? Email 'em to me! If you come up with some really great ones, I'll post them here with credit to you!