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Ghost Email

4 Comments
by Melvin Rivera
Updated: Oct 17th, 2009

A ghost email address will save you from a whole lot of SPAM. If you own your own web address, whenever you get asked to give your email address, just make one up. Make sure you can receive all incoming mail to your server. If you get SPAM to a particular ghost address, filter it out and you will live a SPAM free life. Well OK, maybe just a little less SPAM than before. But at least you’ll know who the offender might be.

Ghost Email Address Screenshot

What do I need to set this up?
All you need is your own web address and email hosting. You can purchase a web address for as low as $7 a year and hosting for as low as one dollar a month. A small price for a SPAM free life.

What is a Ghost Email Address?
A ghost email address is an email address that you give out but that you do not necessarily have it set up as an actual email account. You need to set up your email application to receive all email that reaches your domain. And although you real email address might be victor@yourdomain.com you can still receive email if I send it to lazyeyevictor@yourdomain.com

How does it work?
Whenever you need to enter an email address in a form, make one up. If you need to buy a ticket from United Airlines, tell them your address is unitedairlines@yourdomain.com. Replace yourdomain.com with whatever you particular web address is. Whenever you start getting SPAM(and you will, oh yes, you will), just create a rule to filter out any email sent to that address an complain to the offender for selling your email address.

What if it’s too late?
Change the username for you official address. It will be like starting new and you can transition easily since you can still get the catch all emails.

Note: This tip I learned from my friend Steve Watson


4 Comments

  • Joe says:

    Even better, use spamgourmet.com. You don’t need your own domain, you can control how many emails get thru before they all stop, and you can allow certain addresses and/or domains to get thru for as long as you like. This last feature is useful if you want to try a mailing list, for example, or you want emails from a vendor to get thru but not from any third parties.

  • Ed Fladung says:

    Hey! how come i didn’t think of that? damn. too slick.

  • Massimo says:

    One problem though, can be the spammers, that intentionally, and randomly sends to any weird address they can come up with, targeted at your domain, say 1234@yourdomain.com or wewannahelpyou@yourdomain.com. Beware.

  • I’ve been doing this for a long time and what Massimo says is indeed a problem if you use a “catch all” email account.

    It’s still worth it, however.

    The most interesting discovery I made was the harvesting of my whois information. Whenever I register a domain, I use whois@freshdomain.com for my contact information. Getting a message sent to whois@whatever.com simply blows my mind.

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