[SC-Help] Re: Giving them my email

[Mike Easter]

Erin wrote:
> Are you saying there is no ethical way to
> clear an email address of spam besides shutting it down or using some
> kind of blocking?

That is fundamentally correct.  Personally, I don't like to 'run away'
from an email address, but I would rather 'defend it'.  However, I have
some experience at defending an address and I have some interest in
keeping currently spammed addresses.  My strategies of defending my
address might be different from someone who has a 'brand new' hotmail
address which is currently getting spammed to death.

> I don't mind 'mungeing' from my own address, but I
> don't get very much spam - maybe 1 or 2 a week.

I think that what you are going to be doing about your mail is going to
be different from what you are doing about your mom's mail;  assuming
that you are going to be your mom's mail support person.  It sounds like
you are going to be a paid SC reporter.

> However, I'm trying
> to cut down on my mom's spam for her, and I can't have access to her
> account (at hotmail) forever. Is there nothing I can do for her?

If your mom currently has a brand new hotmail address that doesn't have
'value' to her in some special way, and it is already getting tons and
tons of spam, probably because it was an address or a username which
previously belonged to someone else, then either you are going to have
to institute some significant filter or you are going to have to
jettison that address in favor of one which is more random or unique so
that it won't start getting all of the spam which someone else with the
same username has 'caused' by having a common username or by exposing
that username broadly in newsgroup From or at a naked mailto on a
website.

In the long run, even if she runs from her current addy, she will need a
spam defense strategy involving filters.

-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin