Upkeep is annoying me (OldForumCopy)

General discussion re sg.

Upkeep is annoying me (OldForumCopy)

Postby miniscus » Sat Aug 30, 2003 11:49 pm

By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
Upkeep is annoying me
2003-07-23 22:09


1) SpamGourmet is the best and most goodest spam solution on the planet.

2) I wish I didn't have to maintain it so much.

Maybe my useage is unique. But I identify precisely ONE address fallen into the spammer hands. Yet I have to visit SG all the time to re-up my incoming addresses to 20.

Trusted senders aren't a solution. Fundamentally, why would I have to re-up an account? Shouldn't I have instead a channel for my righteous anger against spam, that of visiting the site and shutting off that address?

I would like to just turn "off" a compromised address, and the others can stay on, 100%.

Does any other similar service do it this way? Yes, SpamGourmet rules. But this aspect of returning to re-up to 20 for no good reason is a bit flawed somehow.



By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-07-25 15:03


Your usage is definately unique......

If the address has "fallen into the spammer hands", why in the world would you go an re-up it to 20?
To turn it off, just go to Advanced Mode, Show Disposable Addresses, click the offending "spammed" address and set it to 0. Done. No more spam.


By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-07-27 10:01


They wouldn't change the spammer-compromised address. It's the addresses which are being used legitimately which they would have to keep resetting to 20, so they keep on working.

Spam Gourmet is great for addresses you don't expect to receive more than a few emails on. It's much less convenient if you expect the accounts to generate a significant volume of legitimate emails before being compromised. It's somewhat frustrating because Spam Gourmet is otherwise SO convenient to use.

Using dated accounts which expire in 14 days could be considerably more convenient than Spam Gourmet if there were lots of legitimate emails, just because you'd only have to reset that every two weeks instead of every few days.


By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
Visit on breech onlny
2003-07-29 00:56


My thinking is that SG is more complex than necessary. It requires me to regularly confirm validity of an incoming address, rather than confirm one time only the loss of an address to a spammer.

SG has solved my spam problem (YAY) but has created the new problem of fearing my legitimate email will overwhelm the 20-msg limit before I drag back over to re-up.

Instead, I should drag over to squash the obviously-compromised account. Upping at all shouldn't be necessary.

Anyone know of a similar tool that runs in this way?




By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
Roll my own
2003-07-29 02:49


I've decided I am not out to lunch on this issue of maintenance, and really I don't get where you're coming from with this design. It's as if we believe email addresses will be compromised eventually, so we grant them these self-destruct properties. This isn't my reality. I've had one disposable address compromised from a newsgroup posting (shoulda saw that coming), and another from a web site with a massive security hole (which I convinced them to fix).

So to me, having to return to re-up these accounts does not make sense. Primarily I have to re-up the main return address on my email account. People reply, and as they do, it increments.

I appreciate one anon comment but I don't even see the need for time-destructing emails. Frankly, I know what spam looks like... so long as it has the email in the subject (as it now does), I would be happy to tune into the web site at that time and cut that address.

What I'm realizing is that since I do have my own domain, I am probably *this* close to implementing what I'm talking about. There's no need for counts and budgets before required administration. There's just (a) a format (such as name.foo.me@mine.com), and (b) the power to discard from a given name.

I'm a bit lost regarding how to receive incoming email programmatically. I can generate it and if I could readily receive it, I could implement what I'm describing.

Could someone specify alternatives to SG? I could check them out. But like one I saw today was NOT the solution: You give an address that goes to them, and you go to THEM to see what email was sent. Certainly SG's approach with forward-or-discard is right. But I am not sure why it's so heavy on administration.



By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-07-29 21:02


It sounds like sneakemail (http://sneakemail.com/) or SpamMotel (http://www.spammotel.com/) is what you're looking for. Create an address which is a forward to your "real" email address (although you don't get to choose the disposable address, you're just assigned a random one) and the disposable address is active indefinitely, until you manually go in and deactivate the address.


By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-07-29 21:05


Check out sneakemail (http://sneakemail.com) or SpamMotel (http://www.spammotel.com/)--these sound like what you're looking for.


By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-07-31 08:47


it's easy.. this isn't what you're trying to use it for..

when you go to a site, and to register, they have to send an email to your account, to confirm your login, but you know, that as soon as they do that, you're going on a list, then use this service..

if you're expecting a lot of legitimate emails to an address, then give them a legitimate address..




By: maratheamit ( Amit Marathe )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-07-31 17:33


The reason for the auto-dispose feature (addresses deactivating after 20 messages) is, I believe, the desire to have a "dead man's switch" so that each address receiving emails requires some regular action on the owner's part to keep it alive. While I agree that there should be a way to expire old/neglected addresses, the one used by SG does get quite bothersome for disposable addresses we might create for frequent correspondence.

Do people have suggestions on better/alternative ways to implement this "dead man's switch"? One thought is to require users to login occasionally (say every couple of months).

-- Amit



By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
simpler
2003-08-01 05:18


"if you're expecting a lot of legitimate emails to an address, then give them a legitimate address."

I want to use SG for 100% of my incoming email. This has the benefit of allowing me to change underlying mailboxes with ease. I am not sure I like your solution to the 20-limit, because exposing actual underlying addresses is to be avoided at all costs. Once they go, the gig is up, you have to move again. If you do find value in the 20-limit, I am curious how it helps you.

Swimming in a spam flood, I found the "dead man's switch" (DMS) at first novel, but now ill-conceived.

I am not sure in what context it ever makes sense. I think SG would be more widely adopted and just as useful if it simply turned Off an account at user request.

The design is ill-conceived because the experience of spam is so obvious. I know when the legitimate email is arriving... and I know what spam looks like. It's at that moment that I'm comfortable with (even desiring) a pro-active step, to shut them down now. But in this design, my observance or willingness to perform timely upkeep threatens losing legitimate emails.

It's my view that DMS adds nearly no value and is the Only source of headache in this design. I might be unique in useage but I don't understand how that could be. In any case, I've thought of a HACK to deliver what I crave, if a redesign is not in the offering.

In particular, if my incoming emails did not INCREMENT the count, that'd be great. If an account got compromised, I could simply DUMP THE REMAINING COUNT to zero. Incrementing the eaten spam is valuable so I know what addresses have been compromised, and, you know, for fun. But it's also my view that (forgive a weak understanding of more advanced features here) ONLY THESE COMPROMISED ACCOUNTS even matter. Everything else is welcome through, and I don't even need a list of it.

I have looked at SG alternatives and so far it seems you have to go to their site to CREATE an address, and even go to their site to RECEIVE the email. ICK. SG has a major win with the maintenance-free address pattern design, trusted senders, and forwarding. The kill switch, while novel, introduces the scary potentiality of sleeping through the numeric expiration of a perfectly valid address. My current spam exposure more strongly suggests that accounts can be managed individually, and with an eye toward going with the flow unless the user intervenes. When places send a lot of messages, I still should decide if I want off their list. There's no need to make this decision for me, and fundamentally I want to limit the practice of discarding email.

I have a domain name now, and envision the simple design of a near-identical addressee sifting algorythm, a list of compromised targets, same appending the inbound address to the subject, and that's it. I'm surprised I haven't found this basic and maintenance-free design in a spam solution. But yes, I do hope SG could implement my incrementor hack, if not re-evaluate the DMS and move to a simple "compromised" vs. "open" boolean for each address.


By: maratheamit ( Amit Marathe )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-08-01 06:15


You are looking at the issue purely from the point of an end-user of the service. From that perspective, what you say makes a lot of sense.

But I would argue that to run any free service like SG, a dead man's switch (DMS) is almost a necessity. Otherwise, it is too easy for someone to sign up and then forget about their account (which takes up server resources).

The current system may not be the best but while SG is free, I think it should have some form of DMS.
If SG ever becomes a pay-service the DMS can be easily eliminated without any adverse consequences.

-- Amit





By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
Inactive Accounts and Us
2003-08-01 23:03


You are right, I never did think of that.

Your solution cuts bandwidth useage in half for dead accounts. I guess there's no way to eliminate it. But you needn't send the forwards out for dead accounts.

(1) What if you dropped the DMS and replaced it with a monthly inquiry? [CLICK HERE TO KEEP YOUR SG ACCOUNT ACTIVE!] You'll still get the pro-active feedback you want.

(2) If I sent you ten bucks you grant me my hack?


John



By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-08-04 23:48


add *@* as a trusted sender to the account you want to keep forwarding maybe? then it wont dump anything till you get tired of that address and remove the trusted sender. I am assuming you can set @* and it will work to allow anyone to send a message.


By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
almost...
2003-08-06 22:41


i thought about that... any message--even one sent to a compromised address--will be forwarded if it's from a trusted sender. so essentially you're describing a way to completely disable SG. :)


By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
How to reduce the issue?
2003-08-07 23:38


Yes, SpamGourmet is ideal for accounts which are expected to be compromised quickly. Things like newsgroup postings and signups of other sorts.

But it's also extremely convenient to give everyone a different mail address.

For individual senders, you can add them to trusted senders and their email address will work forever. No issue there.

Where there is an issue is for public addresses with random senders which you only want to disable once the spam starts to arrive.

Somewhere between 1 email and infinite emails there's a compromise which cuts the overhead but doesn't introduce excessive burdens for SpamGourmet. Today it's 20 and that's enough for addresses with modest volumes and for new address creation. Something higher would be good for those who turn out to be trustworthy.



By: miniscus ( Arick Hofmann )
RE: How to reduce the issue?
2003-08-08 01:36


I surely do not mean to be as mean as it sounds *gg*, but to me as simple user this is getting close to abuse of SG. It is called SPAM-gourmet. What do we have a real address for? And the option of x freemail accounts? For trusted senders I would guess... I never believed SG was meant for sophisticated and personal organisation of your E-mail contacts. It is meant for a combination of par. 1 and 2 of the last post AFAIK. Maybe more, if you wish, but to adapt all of SG to the other would be slightly off goal to me...
In short: "turn out to be trustworthy" ?
Well, then give'm a different address, right? *eg*
Arick


By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-08-09 22:45


Sure, but everyone likes easy and Spam Gourmet is really easy, so it's natural to want to use this easiest solution as much as possible. Even when it's not so easy...:)

By: jqh1 ( Josiah Hamilton )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-08-17 13:23


If you add the disposable address itself as the "exclusive sender", it will effectively be indefinite, since mail addressed "to" the exclusive sender will be treated as if it were from the exclusive sender -- this is a side effect of a feature that was added to support mailing lists that always send to the same address, but rarely from the same address.

CC and BCC won't work, because it only matches To:

This should probably remain obscure, because the deadman switch is probably the *number one* reason sg has been able to stay up and stay free... (btw, good nomenclature, Amit - wish we had been using that term all along)




By: nobody ( Nobody/Anonymous )
RE: Upkeep is annoying me
2003-08-23 06:36


Thanks. That's a nice way to accomplish it without compromising the basic assumption that every sender will eventually abuse any address they are supplied with. That's currently the principle I work with...

It's far better than the login requirement, which would burden those who haven't given in and decided never to supply an address which can't be turned off with ease and without pain for other senders.
miniscus
 
Posts: 48
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2003 10:05 pm
Location: Wiesbaden, Germany

Kill accounts by setting at Zero messages left to forward?

Postby jayzzz » Sat Nov 22, 2003 8:00 pm

Perhaps I missed someone else suggesting this, and if so, I apologize.

When I want an address to stop existing, I just zero it out so no more messages can be forwarded. Seems as if someone else must've thought of this before, but I couldn't find it in this thread. Have used spamgourmet for a couple of years, but this is my first visit to its forum.

Trusted senders would still get through, but for me that is not a problem...trusted senders don't know my SG addresses other than the one I gave them to use, and can be asked to use different ones as times change.

mj :)
jayzzz
 


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