Each company who I provide an email address to, gets a completely different email address. That way I can filter these out once I get annoyed at the level of spam.
For example:
Quite recently, I’ve been receiving an insane number of spam emails from quite a few large companies, including:
- ASDA
- Doncaster Racecourse
- Groupon (Although they may have shared my email with someone I bought from)
- PayPal (Again may have shared my email with someone I bought from)
- Monster
- Abbey National
As an IT Professional, I’ve even tried to contacting one of the above to advise them that somewhere they have a virus infection which keeps hammering out emails to me (reverse lookup on the IP address from the headers clearly identified it as their head office). To which I was pushed off as some insane person who receives too much spam and wanted someone to blame…
That company then instantly got added to my blacklist I will not do my online shopping through them ever again.
Good thing is, if you don’t own your own domain, there’s services out there which will do this for you, such as Spam Gourmet.
In due course, I’ll be moving my email in order to give me more storage and better spam filtering (don’t get any at present). Have a few options but still weighing it up:
- GMail – £3.30 + VAT a month
- Office365 – £3.10 + VAT a month
- MailEnable – Free, but needs a windows VM
- Postfix – Free, but needs a linux VM
I’m leaning more towards GMail at the minute, as this way I don’t have to manage anything myself nor install updates or hotfixes etc. Plus it will integrate more with my Android mobile phone, but time will tell. I’m in no rush at the minute.