Note to the indiscriminate PayPal spammer
Today, my filtering technique has let me down. Not that my idea is unsound, or has be breeched, it’s just that it stopped working. Thus, I had to deal with these obvious problems:
1. One would surmise that when PayPal sends a notice that it has shut the account of the user down, it would be helpful to know which account was shut down
2. The correct trademarked spelling of your company is ‘PayPal’ not ‘PayPall’
3. Nothing says ‘legitimate email’ like “Paypal Update Team, N.A. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender”
Depressingly, I’ve seen an increase of email from spammers showing up in my inbox. It isn’t because I’ve changed anything in my setup, it’s just that the filtering isn’t working. That’s to say, the filter, were it working correctly, would keep me from ever seeing this stuff.
How to filter like a champion?
- Forward your email to a Gmail account
- Have the Gmail automagically forward that back
- Only get the mail from your safe account
- Profit
The key to this is that you are feeding all your email through Gmail’s filters. The reason you want to send all is because you want as many ‘eyes’ on it as possible. Whatever makes it past your hosting’s filters gets weeded out. Then, on the round trip, it gets another looksee from your hosting.
Security
The idea that Google is getting its paws all over your email is a genuine concern. You get the same effect using Google Apps for your domain. That’s why I have a third, changing address that I use for unique email that I want to keep more secure.
Also, I’m forwarding the email using the *.*+*@*.tld convention, so each of the forwarded addresses go to name+whatever@me.com for each of the email aliases. That way I can track what went where.
