Comments on: India Needs an AntiSpam Law

By: hrish

hrish — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:00:22 +0000

@Bhagwad : Regarding having another email address for such things – that is a workaround, not a solution. Also, the second and third points you have mentioned are completely valid. But they are what I call ‘regular’ spam, slightly different from the first type.

By: Bhagwad Jal Park

Bhagwad Jal Park — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:53:10 +0000

Take my advice and don’t enter your main email ID into any site. What I do is I have another email ID which isn’t useless, but isn’t my primary one either. Then you won’t be flooded with spam all the time.

Also, never click an “unsubscribe” link. Spammers use it to confirm that the email ID is working! So instead of not getting any more emails, you get many many more. I learn this in the early days of the web.

Also, the first commenter has a good way to deal with spam. But in my opinion, why expose your mail ID at all? And don’t put it anywhere on your website either as a “Contact Me” link. Use a form that submits to a server for that.

By: hrish

hrish — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:45:56 +0000

@Satya – Yes, that might be a workaround for specific cases. However, I want to address the more general problem of privacy violation. The ubiquitousness of email makes it so easy to send junk that we have almost come to accept it as routine. We don’t, however, accept it so easily for unsolicited calls on cellphones – so why for email?

By: Satya

Satya — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:20:31 +0000

Gmail provides an easy way to take care of this. if your email account is talonx@gmail.com, you can enter talon.x, t.alonx, tal.onx etc as valid gmail ids. Just create a filter that transfers any email to spam and you’re done. Specific emails ( like ticket confirmation etc) you can easily go to the spam filter and get.

Works for me!