Beating Email Spammers

By Tyler W.

February 17, 2021

Beating Email Spammers

Email is the number one cause of cybersecurity breaches, it causes most people I know a level of anxiety and it is a zero privacy medium. There are means to defeat this though!

It is no secret my personal disdain for email – the broken channel of communication that causes more problems than it solves. Think about it, email is the number one cause of cybersecurity breaches, it causes most people I know a level of anxiety and it is a zero privacy medium – anyone can email anyone. One of the worst traits of email is that it takes very little for your details to end up with someone you did not intend it to be. I do not mean a person so much as I do a corporation, a corporation that has no interest in respecting your privacy or interests and only wants to ‘spam’ you. Thankfully, I have a trick or two to help you alleviate this.

Have you ever received a (marketing) email and wondered “I don’t remember signing up for that?” I am going to assume yes because I mentally pose this question to myself daily. This happens because your email address has been stolen or sold (likely the latter). How do you stop this? Well, you cannot stop these corporations from selling or losing your data, but you can cut them off at the source, but I do not mean quitting email.

The first solution I tried was using a specific email address, for example amazon@mydomain and then if I received an email at that address that was not from Amazon I would know Amazon had lost or sold my data. I could then delete the address to stop the spam. The issue with this is if you have a catch-all email address at your domain (which is recommended), then deleting the email address doesn’t stop the email getting through, because any address at my domain essentially exists.

The best solution to avoid this email abuse is to use an anonymous email forwarder, such as AnonAddy.

As an email forwarder acts like a bridge or conduit between the one sending the email and your inbox, controlling these unwanted emails becomes much easier. Whenever I must provide an email address to a vendor or service I do not know, I provide a disposable address from one of the anonymous email forwarders I use. As the email is not associated with my domain, or name, the address is easily destroyed, and communication ceased immediately using one of these services.

It is important to note that some websites will not allow the use of these addresses to complete an account, and as such you may need to consider an alternative strategy. As a simple rule of thumb – if my real name is required to complete an account, I will provide one of my real addresses; if an alias or no-name can be used, a forwarder is deployed.

These forwarders also serve a great purpose for those who evidence a strong need to protect their identity, as the premium subscriptions allow replies form these spawned email addresses. This is particularly beneficial for executives who may need to protect their personal email address, or abuse victims who do not, or simply cannot afford, for their personal email address and connection to their identity to be exposed.

Regardless of your need, you should consider an email forwarder to take back control of your inbox, because, after all, it is your inbox!