Reverse E-Mail Blockage.....

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 29 December 2013, Eddie G. O'Connor Jr. sent:
> this is all fascinating to me. I'm not using a mail server, just 
> trying to keep the size of my Inbox down, since the more spam it gets 
> the fatter it gets as well....I will be looking into all possibilities
> regarding this matter. I can now see that the "Allow In Just what I
> want & Block All Others" is the more sensible way to go about
> it...instead of trying to block what seems like millions of different
> email addresses that sometimes have the same email in it.!!

Playing with whitelisting is as annoying as managing anti-spam software.
You have to remember to whitelist anybody before you can communicate.
It gets worse if both sides do that.

I've come to the conclusion you need two or three addresses:

A personal one, that you don't bandy about on mailing lists.  You pick
an account name that's peculiar enough that you won't get dictionary
attack mail (they make up addresses by putting words together that might
be in an email address, so make it something like a three or four word
address).  You don't go bonkers with anti-spam solutions on this
address, or you'll lose mail from your friends, and lose contact with
them.

A separate address you use for things like mailing lists, or purchasing
things (i.e. an address that you will not need permanently).  It will
get spammed, this is the one you set harsh rules on what will be
accepted.  And if it gets mailbombed, you can abandon it and not lose
contact with friends and family.

A third address is one method of avoiding mailing list spam.  You
subscribe to a list twice, with two addresses.  You receive the mail on
one, reply with the other.  You delete all mail received at the address
you reply from (set up an inbox rule that does it on the server).  Other
users/list-harvesters only know about the address you post from, it's
the only address they see on mail from you, and that's the address that
they spam, but you never see it because you never look at its inbox
(pick a mail service to host it that deserves having to handle spam, or
wants to receive spam).  The spammers don't know about the address you
receive the mail at, they can't deliberately spam it, because they don't
know its address, and if you pick an unusual account name, you don't
even get dictionary spam on it.

This works very well, for me.  I get zero spam from participating in
this list.  And, as an added bonus, if anybody is sending me spiteful
private mail, I have no idea that they're doing it.

Now, if all the lists I were interested in chatting with were on usenet
instead of mailing lists, I'd be in a lot better position.  Usenet posts
don't come from an email address, they're posted to the usenet server in
a different way.  The place where you *can* fill in a "from" address can
be filled in with bogus details, or a spam-trap address that you won't
read.  And good usenet clients have much better routines for handling
large amounts of messages, archiving, ignoring, following threads, etc.

This mailing list can be accessed through a usenet interface at gmane,
but I don't really want to use a separate usenet and mail program every
day, and many combined clients aren't very good.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point
trying to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the
public lists.