E-mail is back

[cjsmith]

My personal e-mail has been turned back on, in the sense that if 1) you know the right address to reach me and 2) you aren't coming from a domain I've labeled awful and 3) you don't use any words I've labeled awful in the subject, you can reach me.

The minor upside to all this mess is that I now know how to say things like undeliverable, spam filter, failure, address book, and delivery status notification in several major languages.

Comments

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is one heck of a silver-lining finder you've got there. You should take it to the beach and look for buried treasure.

(I'm sorry about the spam. I hope your filtering works.)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I adore languages. :)

Fingers crossed! Thanks!

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Trust me, I understand. Approximately 20% of my job is spent diagnosing spam and email issues. PITA.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

No kidding. I wish it were more commonplace for these guys to get tracked down and unplugged. I don't have the skills and I don't have the time, but I sure wish someone else who had the skills also had the time/inclination. Are there any techie people out there whose whole paychecks are for tracking spammers and getting them shut down?

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. I know about a half dozen such folks, from Symantwc, GWAVA, Messaging Architects, and other places. It really is a full time job. Now that phishing has become so common, law enforcement has gotten involved, too.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's simultaneously cool (that the good guys are putting effort into this) and very sad (the amount of human ingenuity that could be used in other ways if we didn't have to fight this).

I wouldn't cry if every spammer suddenly dropped over dead. Seriously. I would not be able to pull the trigger myself, but the amount of sheer WASTE these guys create -- they're a drag on human existence, and that's unconscionable. We need a bolt of lightning from the heavens, or something.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

It's even more horrifying at packet level.

[ozdachs.livejournal.com]

With all the webmaster addresses I have out there I gave up and went to SpamArrest (http://www.spamarrest.com/affl?4024648-source1/howitworks/) a couple years ago. Now I only accept messages from people I know or people who answer a spam challenge.

Some folks don't figure it out, but since I uploaded my Outlook contact list I don't think I'm missing many messages.

I hate having to pay $50 a year to not see come-ons wanting to help me enlarge my breasts, but that's the world we live in, I guess.