Dealing with Spammers +

I’m revisiting my September 11th post on an Email Checkup. In the article by Graham Jones (link below), he suggests you Google “Have I been Pwnd” and if you’ve found that you were hacked, you should create a new email. This technique is helpful to learn if you've been hacked, but I have a friend who disagrees with the solution.

Adam Thompson, Director of Digital Marketing, The SSL StoreTM (see a link to his page below) clarifies the purpose of "Have I Been Pwnd":

The author of this article appears to misunderstand what "Have I Been Pwned" does. It checks whether your passwords have been compromised in a data breach--if so, change your password, but there's no need to create a new email address. 

Getting spam emails generally has nothing to do with data breaches. While spammers could use email addresses from data breaches to send to, there are tons of other ways spammers get email addresses.

Adam also offers a useful suggestion:

If you're getting a lot of spam, you could change your email address and that would reduce it at least temporarily. But it would just build up over time again as spammers get your new email address. Changing an email address to avoid spam seems like way more hassle than its worth to me.

Here's my preferred way to avoid spam:

Gmail (and some other providers) allow you to create an unlimited number of email addresses that all point to your main email.

Like this:

youremail@gmail.com

youremail+anythingyouwanthere@gmail.com (Email sent here will show up in your email box just like normal)

You can use these extra addresses publicly and/or to signup with companies. If someone starts spamming them, just create a rule to send all emails from that address to your spam folder.

This is the approach I've used for a couple of years, but I have to remind myself from time to time to complete the redirection. 😎

Adam added an example of how to use this technique:

The extra email addresses are hugely helpful if you're doing something like QA testing on a new website--you can fill out forms, create accounts, etc. with a new email address every time, pretending you're a new customer.

Try this approach out if you're looking for something to help your email productivity. Remember once you've received the value you wanted, you can and should redirect unwanted emails to your spam folder.

What is your best ideas to protect against spammers? 

#spammers #productivity #email