[famousdavis]

Petite Flower wrote:

I use my Hotmail account for all purchases etc. Spam goes there. I don't care who sells the address, not worth worrying about, I expect any business I give my address to to eventually sell it. Maybe they won't, but if they do, I don't care, it's just my hotmail account, I already get 20-50 spam messages there every day(sometimes more!), and I get no personal mail there, I just go there every so often and delete.

I guess my objective is to completely avoid having to browse through any email account to sift through the good from the bad. I want two accounts: one for personal-private messages, one for personal-business messages. If any of the businesses I deal with violate the trust given them when I share my email account, I want to be able to filter them -- and everyone they sold me out to -- so my personal-business account remains pure.

The big job I have now is replacing my old, spam-filled email account that is registered at many websites with unique email forwarding account names.

[famousdavis]

Petite Flower wrote:

I use my Hotmail account for all purchases etc. Spam goes there. I don't care who sells the address, not worth worrying about, I expect any business I give my address to to eventually sell it. Maybe they won't, but if they do, I don't care, it's just my hotmail account, I already get 20-50 spam messages there every day(sometimes more!), and I get no personal mail there, I just go there every so often and delete.

I guess my objective is to completely avoid having to browse through any email account to sift through the good from the bad. I want two accounts: one for personal-private messages, one for personal-business messages. If any of the businesses I deal with violate the trust given them when I share my email account, I want to be able to filter them -- and everyone they sold me out to -- so my personal-business account remains pure.

The big job I have now is replacing my old, spam-filled email account that is registered at many websites with unique email forwarding account names.

[ctmagnus]

I have an almost spam-free existance. I did the same thing you did, only I have a bunch of email addresses I use for different purposes all of which are forwarded to a main address. Then everything gets forwarded from there to my actual email. I've received maybe 10 unsolicited messages in the last 2.5 years on the actual email account (my ISP has excellent filtering) and one on any of the forwarded addresses. With that one, I filtered through the headers, found an actual address and sent a very nasty letter to the sender, from the address that is filtered.

I wouldn't have bothered but the headers were spoofed to look like it came from my personal domain. It got personal then.

[JackTheTripper]

I've been doing this for 2 years. Have a domain name registered at www.doteasy.com and pay $25 a year and get free hosting. Have anything @ mydomain forwarded to my main e-mail addy. When I sign up for stuff I always use put <name_of_site> @ <my_domain> .com.

I signed up on cnet.com so I could download software. Used cnet@.... About 6 months later I started getting spam to that address for adult sites. Contacted them and they assured me they don't sell addresses. I told them what I did and they said someone could get it off the net. (spam bot) but again I said I never posted it anywhere on the web. I suggested that maybe they had been hacked or an employee is steeling addy's and selling them. They argued that neither has happened and that maybe someone guessed it.

Basically I didn't get anywhere with them.

[ctmagnus]

Originally Posted by JackTheTripper

I've been doing this for 2 years. Have a domain name registered at www.doteasy.com and pay $25 a year and get free hosting.

That's what I use as well.

[famousdavis]

Originally Posted by JackTheTripper

I've been doing this for 2 years. Have a domain name registered at www.doteasy.com and pay $25 a year and get free hosting.(

If you are paying $25 a year to get free hosting, then what is the $25 a year for?

I signed up on cnet.com so I could download software. Used cnet@.... About 6 months later I started getting spam to that address for adult sites. Contacted them and they assured me they don't sell addresses.

Isn't that interesting? I'm betting that the Customer Service rep who answered your inquiry probably has no clue what happens to the data stored on CNET's website. You've probably concluded correctly -- either someone's hacked their customer data or an employee is stealing customer info or -- a third option -- CNET doesn't know what's exactly happening to their own data (this would be my #1 suspect).

While admittedly it's a little troublesome to have to set-up a new forwarding account for every new website registration, the benefit is clear: it stops spam in its tracks, and if spam does land into your Inbox, you have an easy way of blocking it by shutting off the forwarded email account.

[vlado]

I do the same thing but use a truly free hosting solution - www.mydomain.com

This makes it extremely cheap to do (domain registration fees only). It also allows you to have a catchall address - this way I only need to separately redirect compromised email addresses to some non-existent address.