So Many Email Addresses

Only a correct name shall pass
So how many email addresses do you have in your address book? Quite a few I bet. If you use the system that I am working on then you will have to create email forwarding addresses for most if not all of them. This is how the security works. Sure, you can create a special email address and just use if for your trusted friends, and that may make sense. but what if one of those "trusted friends" sends an email out to many people including you and the addresses are all listed under the "CC" field? Do you trust your friend's friends? If a spammer should get a hold of that list, then your email address that your friends use is going to start getting spam and you won't know who is responsible, most likely. That's a risk you will have to consider taking or not. I think for most people the added work in creating forwards is much less than the never-ending problem of getting more and more nasty spam and dealing with it in all the various ways available.

But what about all those places that you want to control? Like newsletters, different kinds of accounts on web sites, and other things that require or request an email address? If you are active on the web, that list could easily grow to hundreds of email forwards that you will have to create and maintain.

Still, I don't see anyway around it unless it would be to create forwards that are then used for groups of emails. If a group got too much spam at one point you cound just dump it, but then you are going to lose mail from sources you want to receive from. This is the issue that I am concerned about with my system to block all spam without using filters, rules, or black lists.

This post was prompted by my starting to create forwards for all the new accounts I create. Yesterday I had to add about 6 forwards after finding a list of newsletters I wanted to subscribe to. I opened up my admin page, copied the domain of the newsletter ( samplenewsletter.com) and then created a forward using the domain (samplenewsletter-com@nielsentech.com). This takes a minute, but it does have an added feature that I had not forseen. If you use a standard naming format, you can filter for this and filter them mail into defferent folders, like a newsletter folder. So maybe the work of creating the forwards has additional benefit for managing all the mail that comes in.

I'm going to continue and see how this goes. I think in reality that the maintenance is going to be a non-issue. Once you create an email forward, you just keep it. If you need to unsubscibe you can do that and don't have to worry about removing the forward that will then no longer be used. Again, if anything gets spam, you just find the forward and delete it.

Controlled Access Email is a private project designed to deal with the spam problem once and for all by creating an email address for each person that wants to contact you. This should be less work than blocking millions of email addresses, IP addresses, and servers. If any email address is used to send you spam you will know who is responsible and be able to delete the address they used to instantly stop additional spam.

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Digging Out Of A SPAM Pit

Spam Assassin is my friend!It's one thing to start using a SPAM-blocking system like what we have designed from the beginning, and another to starting using it when you have been using the same email address for many years (Since late 1999) and have many other email addresses and forwards that you have been using for different sites and purposes.

Perhaps I will be my own best test case to see how practical this really is. But it's going to take some time to start changing subscriptions and sending people new email addresses. I really HATE the idea of dumping my main email address. I have fought long and hard reporting spammers to keep it usable. I still get a lot of spam, but my spam reports have resulted in many spammer accounts being closed and SPAM Assassin filters out most of the garden variety spam, so even though I have been using the same email address for about 9 years the spam has not gotten too bad.

So maybe I will just keep the main email address that I use for now, and change over what I can moving forward. When I wrote the title for this post I was thinking about the spam being a huge problem, but really it's the fact that I have used one email address for many years, and there are so many people and accounts that have it listed that to notify and change them all seems like a job that could take a long, long time to complete.

For now I just have to remember to create new email forwards when I need to provide an email address. Also, I have two "hidden" POP3 email accounts at the moment. These are un-guessable accounts that I use to collect mail from all the forwards. The idea is that I can create and delete forwards easily, but if I have to delete a POP3 account it's going to be a lot of work. I would have to change all the forwards to go to a new POP3 in order to keep the SPAM out.

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What is Controlled Access Email?

Controlled Access Email is the name I have selected for a system to eliminate email SPAM from the inbox. Well, it's not going to end spam as we know it for a couple of reasons, but it will give the user a high degree of control over how much spam they get and the ability to stop spam from reaching them as easily as changing an email forward or sending a short email.

With this blog I intend to describe the process as I work to develop my idea into a simple, low-cost solution that most average users will be able to use. To realize that aspect, it may require the assistence of others, either in a technical sense or just by making suggestions how the system can be utilized to it's best advantage. The last thing anyone wants are more spam filters that miss spam or block wanted email from arriving.

I think I have given you enough of a teaser for now. If you want to see something along the lines of what my idea is, you can visit ZoEmail.com

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