On Junk Email

I wrote about my efforts to reduce junk mail - now about my efforts to track spam.

Imitating a friend's husband, I have been using customized email addresses for everyone I do business with by email. For example, if I purchased from amazon (which I don't), I would use amazon@lizardkingdom.org as my email address. All of these addresses go straight into my inbox - it can come in handy to own your own domains. So it's all like regular email, except with a "fingerprint" I thought would allow me to figure out where all the spam comes from. Nasty companies who sell my name, j'accuse!

Surprise! I have received only one spam email traceable to a business I have a relationship with. Except one, from Playcentric. I no longer do business with them. But all the other spam I have received over the last year has been addressed to my normal email address. My suspicions about unauthorized email giveaways were unfounded.

This practice has come in helpful, though, in a way I hadn't anticipated.

I don't always check the unsubscription process before I sign up on an e-mail list. And I am often unpleasantly surprised to find that for many lists, there is no process. No instructions at the bottom of the emails. No contact person. No response to inquiries.

So I just block those addresses. Whether or not they remove it from the list when it starts bouncing, I don't care. The email no longer arrives.

I leave you with some spam subject lines from the past few weeks:

• present for Martinlizarraga [oh thank god, I didn't know what to get him! her? it? i'm so naming a dog that.]
• Don't tell anyone please schroeder pantomimic
• Re: Which clean at chassis neckwear ['cause the re: tricks me into thinking it's a response, see?]
• But find it fictionalisation faulty
• The spend go unhallowed [hallelujah]