Email-address?

Since I lost 95% of my spam-emails in a miraculous way, I would like to keep it that way in the future.
How can I protect my email-address against theft ?
Is encryption of my harddisk enough, even when I surf on the net ?

Any suggestions ?
Thanks in advance.

 

What was the miracle?

 

Never give a way the email adress you dont want spammed on web pages (unless its a bank or something else important) If you need to use a email adress to gain something from a web page use Jetable.org adresses. They live only for 8 hours or a week (you decide) redirected to your email adress of choice. http://www.jetable.org/en/index

If you use Firefox there is a great extension for jetable so you´ll get an disposable adress with a right click quickly.

I havent seen spam in my normal email adress for many years my self. Until I discovered jetable I used an hotmail adress that I entered on webpages that got all the spam.
I have no experience where my email adress actually got stolen from my computer, tho. Never heard of it actually. I dont use any encryption on my hard drive or connection. If that would happen I think then there are some serious problems with your security setup (firewall, antivirus and so on)

Well now that I think of it, I do actually get some (one spam a day maybe) on my gmail adress. But it is easily fixed with gmail spam filter coz the spammers dont have much brains and imagination, they use the same words and frases

I cant remember if have entered it on wrong web pages. But I belive someone in a forum "stole" it when he was mad at me, coz I had it for public viewing in my profile for a short time.

 

I posted this already at Wilders.
I moved to another apartment and I was disconnected from the internet during 14 days. NOTHING changed except my postal address.

After I got back on-line all my spam-emails were gone.
I used to have 50-100 spam-emails a day and today I received only 3 spam-emails during 24 hours.
When I open Thunderbird, I always think it's broke, because my inbox is empty and I still receive my good emails of course.

 

In addition to the above suggestions, I would use an email program with strong filters.

I have a domain which is in the public view, so it's prone to email dictionary attacks.

These are easily blocked with filter expressions, and I only see several spams per week - sometimes none - in my regular accounts. The rest are diverted directly to the trash bin.

 

Yes, but that's an anti-spam solution. I already have one : Thunderbird, maybe not so good, but enough for me. It only missed a few.
But I don't get any spam-emails anymore and the 1-5 spam-emails, I still receive are trashed by Thunderbird.

 

Did you ask your ISP if they have a new spam filter?

About a month ago, I stopped getting trojans/worms as zipped attachments - the message included "virus file removed."

I went downtown (local ISP) and "complained" that I no longer was getting stuff to test.

Alas, He had installed a new AV program, and I no longer get stuff to test. Similar was a new spam filter about two weeks ago that cut my spam drastically.

Just a thought...

 

1

My ISP provides a spam filter, but I can choose to use it or not and I never did.
The main reason, why I don't get any spam-emails is that I was disconnected from the internet during 14 days.
I assume I was removed in most spam databases, because my email-address was dead and 14 days is quite a long time.
I never used spam-filters in Thunderbird, too much work. Thunderbird detects 95% automatically. Don't ask me how LOL.

But I would like to have a simple solution that makes my email-address invisible or unreadable. I thought an encrypted harddisk was the solution.

 

Re: 1

Did you check to see if this spam filter isn't active? Access your account to verify.

Telenet, my provider, offers a spam filter and antivirus for free within my subscription fee.

Could be that that spam filter was automatically reactivated when you were disconnected
or maybe it never was unchecked.
Just a possible explanation.

Although I don't use their spam filter, due to messages lost in the past, I do use their antivirus.
However their spam filter now has several options how you would like to
manage messages tagged as spam. (delete, send with tag or headers only)

Have a look.

 

Eldar,
My ISP is also Telenet, not much choice in Belgium LOL.
I checked it, but I'm not sure if the approperiate webpage was a setting or a proposed setting. It's a bit confusing. The setting I saw was that Telenet removed my spam-emails, but it could be a default value if you want to change the settings.
I never changed Telenet and before I moved to my new apartment, I had 50 upto 100 spam-emails a day, but maybe Telenet changed it because my email-address was dead, although I doubt that very much.

So I choosed the right setting to get my spam-emails.
I have to wait at least 30 minutes to make the change effective at Telenet.
I will see in the next days, if it changed anything. I keep you posted.

 

Well, we do have choices in abundance, but I'm satisfied with their service.

That's it, your setting was set to remove all spam, which was the same for me in the past.
Unfortunately it removes legitimate messages too without your knowledge, so be careful with that.

Here's my setting NOT to use the spam filter:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y239/eldarwyn/Wilders/telenet_spamfilter_uit.jpg

When you start Telenet your spam filter is active, which you actually saw when you entered your account.
Could be that that spam filter wasn't effective in the past, but they did change it IIRC.
I only don't know when they did it.

Yes, keep me posted.
I suppose you'll be submerged with messages tagged as spam.

 

Eldar,
I think you are right. But Telenet is the guilty one, they changed that setting, not me and the past proves it.
I didn't like that service, because good emails could also be removed by Telenet and I didn't want this to happen. So I decided to be in control.
This didn't happen when I moved two years ago. This is the very first time.

I just opened Thunderbird and I have my spam-emails back. So nothing changed. Not very nice of Telenet to do this without my knowledge.
You can trust no one nowadays. Pffft.
Thanks for solving the problem.

 

Sorry to be right about that.
Telenet isn't the only one to make a change without letting its customers know.

Yes, that's why I deactivated it, after having found out some purchase emails with license code simply never came in.

Like I predicted, you'll get your spam back after you changed that setting.
Best to check your account once in a while to prevent this from happening.
Glad to be of some help in solving this mistery.

Prettig weekend.

 

Eldar,
The only reason I can think of, why Telenet did this is saving space. Telenet has alot more customers, than in the past.
When a customer like me doesn't download his emails anymore for a long period, they have to save too many emails.
So Telenet changed the setting into removing spam-emails by them in order to get rid of all these saved spam-emails.

But everybody seems to make decisions on their own.
KBC, my bank, did something similar.
The rent of my apartment is paid automatically each month, but 2 years ago I had a month with too many bills and my bank account was very low. So there wasn't enough money on my bankaccount to pay the rent and I wasn't aware of this either, too busy.
So KBC decided to pay the rent from my saving account without any warning or asking me.
OK, I had no money problems, but I was stupified that KBC did this without my approval.
You can't trust nobody nowadays, not even the so called "good" guys.

Amuseer je dit weekend