Journal of PlanetMike

I use a unique email address anyplace I need to give out my email address. This allows me to track spam and other unethical organizations that believe their “message” is more important than my privacy. A simple MD5 hash of (the domain I’m submitting to) plus (a private password) gives me a unique 32 character address. I combine that with a shell script to keep my virtusertable up-to-date, and a set of Eudora filtering rules, and my email is pretty much automagically sorted.

When I opt-out of a mailing list, I mean it. So if an organization adds me back to their list, I get annoyed. Really annoyed. So when the Sierra Club used Uptilt.com to spam me this afternoon, I got annoyed. I’ve reported the spam to Sierra club and Uptilt. We’ll see what kind of response they give me. If any. I’m not expecting much of a response, the Uptilt.com “Anti-Spam Policy” has huge holes in it.

Back in January I set one of my ancient domains to forward all of it’s spam to a Gmail account. (original post: Comparing Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail) I just today looked at the Gmail account to see how it’s doing. Argh! My ancient domain has filled up its hard drive with spam, so it’s been generating error messages for a few days. The Gmail account has collected 49,627 messages in the inbox, and 165,939 messages in the Spam box.

The spam box gets emptied of messages over 30 days old, which I guess is a good thing, since I am using 1,580MB (58%) of my 2,722Mb of space. There aren’t any attachments on these messages either, I strip them when the message comes into my old domain.

I’ve also had to stop forwarding messages to Gmail, Gmail has been refusing the messages since there were too many coming in. [—@gmail.com]: host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[72.14.205.27] said: 450-4.2.1 The Gmail user you are trying to contact is receiving 450-4.2.1 mail at a rate that prevents additional messages from 450-4.2.1 being delivered. Please resend your message at a later 450-4.2.1 time; if the user is able to receive mail at that time, 450 4.2.1 your message will be delivered. f14si1822916qba (in reply to RCPT TO command)

Wow, I upgraded one of my blogs (ShowBizRadio.net) to the enwest WordPress earlier this week. The spam fighting system is very different from earlier versions of WordPress. I received 50+ comment spam attempts starting just a few hours ago. As I was typing this entry, I received 9 more! The attempts are all registering as one of these IP addresses: 64.62.228.2 64.62.228.3 64.62.228.4 64.62.228.5.

Amazing. On a day a when the FTC fines a millionaire spammer a pittance of the fine due, the Washington Post ignores its privacy policy and spams me with an offer to buy their stupid dead tree paper. But yeah, the spam tells me I can opt-out! Like I should trust that, after all, my preferences are already checked to NOT receive their garbage. But that’s ok, they aren’t members of TrustE or the BBB privacy seal programs, so what recourse do we have? None. Jerks. What’s the purpose of having a privacy policy if it can just be ignored? I’d love to have some big wig at the Post tell me it was an accident, and send me an apology. But that won’t happen. You have to be trustworthy and worried about what people think of you to offer an apology for lying.

I wouldn’t subscribe to the Post now if it were free. Who needs an extra couple hundred sheets of paper (newsprint nonetheless) cluttering up the house? It’s no wonder the newspaper subscription count is in freefall.

I’ve just blocked these domains, all related to each other, based on message content, message headers, and whois searches:
messagereach.com premiereglobal.com venturedirect.com xmr1.com xmr2.com xmr3.com xmr4.com xmr5.com xmr6.com xmr7.com xmr8.com xmr9.com xmr10.com xmr11.com xmr12.com xmr13.com xmr14.com xmr15.com. They are sending out drivel (spam) with subject lines like “Savvy IT Pros Are Great Responders!” and “Ministry Values from VentureDirect -Postal Names New to Market!”