Technology Stuff

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Take back your email address

How many times a week do you get prompted for an email address while you are surfing the ol' web? Once? Three times? Multiple times a day? It probably depends on what kind of surfing you do, but it seems that every site wants your address these days. They assure you that they won't sell it or rent it to anyone else, and I'll actually giving them the benefit of the doubt that they honor this promise.

Yet, when you hand it over in order to get some free download or other wares, the marketing campaigns begin. I'm not necessarily talking about spam, although that is certainly something to be concerned about. No, I'm referring to the continuing stream of "special deals", coupons, and other crap that companies want to send you.

Here's another scenario that gets to me regularly. I need to purchase a hard to find item. The big stores that I usually do business with don't have it, so I have to Google for a niche website that carries it. While I'm glad to have found the item in question, I now have to give my address. Now, I do want to get things like shipping notices and order confirmations, but I don't want all the stuff that comes after I've received my order.

So, there's the problem. Now, for the solution. To key to preventing someone keeping your address longer then you want them to is to use a disposable address! If the address they have no longer goes to my primary inbox, then I have no problem at all with them keeping it on file for as long as they want. :)

The great folks over at spamgourmet have provided a service that does this. To use this service, you need to create a login and give them your primary email address. (I know, I know... don't worry, this is the last time you need to surrender your "real" address) Once you have a login name, you are ready to go. Next time you are asked to provide an address, you just follow a pattern. The pattern looks like this:

label.number.login@spamgourmet.com

In the pattern above, you would replace the text "label" with a unique string that is meaningful to you. I usually use the name of the company or website that I am filling out. (This gives me the added advantage of knowing if they did sell their email list to another firm.) Next, you replace the text "number" with a number, either numeric or fully spelled out. Finally, you replace the text "login" with the login name that you created when you originally signed up and keep everything else the same. Here is how it might look:

bestbuy.6.michaelscott@spamgourmet.com

The number in the middle is really the interesting part of all this. Basically, the way that this works is that Best Buy (in my example) will send email to the spamgourmet address. Spamgourmet will then forward the email to my real address if I have received less then 6 messages to the spamgourmet address. Once, I have received 6 messages, then spamgourmet will no longer forward them. They call this "eating" my spam. Next time I actually want to buy something from Best Buy, I login to spamgourmet, search for my bestbuy disposable address, and tell them I want to receive 6 more messages. Easy!

To show how much of an impact this has made for me, I'll publish my stats. These are provided by spamgourmet. "Your message stats: 1,428 forwarded, 18,458 eaten. You have 149 disposable address(es)." This gives me a ratio of almost 13 messages "eaten" for every 1 that I've actually received. Wow...

Oh, and did I mention that spamgourmet is free?