Are you sick of email spam? Do you just hate it when websites forward your contact info to "reliable third parties"? Do you wish you could do something against annoying spammers?
Let’s bust those spammers! I have some excellent advice. It really works 100% guaranteed. And the best thing about it: I won’t charge a single penny! It’s all right here. What you need to do:
- Register a domain for yourself (like bustspammers.com).
Domain registration is cheap [Google search] and you don’t need a fancy name. Anything will do as long as you have control over the domain. - Set up a so-called catch-all email address with your domain and forward it to your private email account.
That means any email that gets sent to your domain (e.g. SomeRandomName@YourDomain.com) will end up in your private email inbox, no matter what’s before the @ symbol. Your private email can be any other email account – Gmail, Yahoo, your school, your work, anything. If you also want to host a website at your new domain you can of course use the email account that the hosting company provides. But if all you need is reliable email with professional features like IMAP access, I can recommend FastMail. You can use your own new domain directly with them and save separate hosting. This is what I’m using. Now you have an unlimited supply of addresses. - Use individual, unique email addresses at every website you deal with.
Ideally, the address you chose identifies the website you used it at. For example, when you register with Amazon to order books and they ask for your email, give them amazon@YourDomain.com; when you book a flight with US Airways, use usair@YourDomain.com. You get the idea. Don’t worry about using so many different addresses. It doesn’t matter – all mail any firm sends you will end up in your private email account although the website/firm will never know what your real private email is. - Don’t use the same email address anywhere else!
That’s all you have to do for now. It sounds more complicated than it is, don’t worry! Just do the three simple things in bold. Now comes the fun part.
Imagine one day you suddenly start receiving requests to enlarge your penis, buy Viagra or consolidate your loans at the account acme@YourDomain.com. That means two things for you:
- You can absolutely, positively, beyond doubt be sure that the Acme Corporation and no-one else leaked (that usually means "sold") your email address to those "trustworthy business partners". Provided, of course, you really did not use the address acme@YourDomain.com anywhere outside of Acme. You could now confront Acme, which may make for a very embarrassing situation on their part, especially when they promised in their Privacy Policy that they will never sell your personal info. In this case, you may even be able to sue them and demand compensation.
- You can from now on simply block any email sent to acme@YourDomain.com. No matter how hard the annoying spammers – sorry, the trustworthy third parties – try, they will never reach you again. For your legitimate communication with Acme, you simply use a new address: acme2@YourDomain.com, which also gives you a convenient way to count how many times the Acme Corp. tried to screw you.
Of course, you will have to be careful to keep your real private email address just that – strictly private. If you do, it’s bullet-proof. This system is the reason this domain exists; I’m using it for this exact purpose. Try it, it will keep your inbox virtually spam-free forever. Enjoy!