[Dixielandjazz] More on hacking, spoofing, spam, etc.

[Dick Baker]

Here's another factor to keep in mind:  Spammers are constantly on 
the prowl for valid email addresses to add to their list.  And 
spammers use bots to comb through web pages looking for character 
strings that follow the pattern of somebody at someplace.com/edu/org, etc.

Fortunately for the sake of our convenience--and for the convenience 
of spammers--all our messages on DJML are posted at our archive web 
site, and they definitely make use of it.  The first email address I 
used on DJML started collecting lots of spam after a few years, so I 
changed it to the one I have now, djml at dickbaker.org.  But that too 
is starting to get a fair amount of spam--and since the ONLY place I 
use that address is here, any spam that comes to that address is 
clearly from that archive.

Since I manage my own domain, I have the luxury of killing the 
compromised address and starting to use a new one.  So if you see me 
showing up as djml2 at dickbaker.org next week, you'll know why.

But you can exercise this strategy even if you don't have your own 
domain.  Most ISPs give you 10 or more mailboxes with a standard 
account, so you could create a special email address for use in a 
special place, like here.  When that address gets on a lot of spam 
lists, you can easily just change that one address with one 
organization and not have to send email to everybody you know telling 
them you've changed your email address.


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      Dick Baker
  djml at dickbaker.org