More options to handle Spam. Review on Choosing Spam Free Email Service

Spamming has been one of the biggest threats to email industry has had to face. Till recent times , articles have appeared announcing the end of email because of the spamming problem. Hotmail , especially , is a absolute spam magnet and a sitting duck for spammers.

Some General Precautions to prevent Spamming

Don’t have a login id which is a short name less 5 characters. Don't use a dictionary word for your id.

It has been noticed that id with numerical characters has less tendency to be spammed.

Also when you mention your email on public websites don’t use the @ character e.g if one had an email such as billgates@hotmail.com then it should be posted as billgatesAThotmailDOTcom

A few other options

One can use disposable addresses when posting on mailing lists and websites.

Spamgourmet.com has a lot to offer in this regard. It is free and gives a lot of options. Highly recommended.You can set disposable addresses to self destruct after receiving a specified number of mails.

bluebottle.com is a free email service with 250 Mb of storage especially geared towards Spam handling. They have an unique Challenge/ response system where every time someone sends an email to your account they receive a return email where they have to click on a link to confirm their identity. No software used by Spammers can do this so only mails sent by individuals is accepted. Mail is accepted by bluebottle only after confirmation. The only problem is if the mail has been sent by a mailing list, in which case you have to white list them beforehand.

Mailblocks.com , recently acquired by AOL has a similar system. However they have stopped accepting new accounts after takeover.

I personally have had a very good experience handling spam on my Runboxemail service.

I have mentioned this on my Runbox review but repeating here -

Runbox has this concept of creating aliases which unlike disposable addresses can be used as email accounts as well.

Create one alias just for purpose of posting on websites / mailing lists. The moment you start receiving spam on this particular alias , just delete it and make a new one.

Another interesting concept is that of plus addressing which is used to make disposable addresses. One can create a email id like last-name+xyz@runbox.com and post it on websites etc. If this leaks out and you start receiving spam and it is been sent to that particular id - you know where it is coming from and you simply block that particular id. e.g to log onto mouthshut.com I set my email address here as lastname+mouthshut@runbox.com , now all emails coming to this particular id can be even filtered into a specific folder and in case there are any problems even rejected.

Runbox has one of the best Spam filters I have ever used. In last three months I have received around two spam messages in my Inbox compared to one or two spam messages a day in my spam folder. I think only about two or three genuine emails (from mailing lists) ended up labelled as Spam in same time period.

They have some option called trainable spam filter and once this happens after some use , you can choose the option of rejecting spam mails.

From Runbox website

What can users do to avoid spam?

Users are urged not to select short or very easy usernames, as these are far more spam prone than slightly longer and more unusual ones. Underscores, hyphens and periods are also recommended as part of your username.

It is crucial not to use valuable email addresses anywhere where it is visible to others (whom you don't know). Never leave your email address behind in guestnooks, petitions, webpages or similar.

Do not use real email addresses for signing up for (free) downloads of any kind online.

When you forward mail to a large number of people, weed out any addresses which are inappropriate, and put everything in the Bcc field to hide them from the other recipients.