How to Avoid Spam (Part 4 of 10) - Use a Unique Email Address

Use a Unique Email Address
Your email address may affect the amount of spam you receive because some spammers use "dictionary attacks" to email many possible name combinations at large ISPs or email services, hoping to find a valid address. Don't use the big ISP's (AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail, or Gmail) for your real email address, although they're great for your throw-away addresses because they're free, use a smaller ISP. Many of the smaller ISP's allow multiple email aliases (my ev1.net account allowed unlimited aliases). Pick a "strong" email address, similar to a strong password:

1. Over eight characters in length. Short email addresses are easier to guess than long passwords.

2. Combines letters, numbers, and symbols. According to RFC 2822, the local-part of the email may use any of these ASCII characters:

-Uppercase and lowercase letters
-The digits 0 through 9
-The characters "!" (exclamation point), "#" (number sign), "$" (dollar sign), "%" (percent sign), "&" (ampersand), "'" (single quote), "*" (asterisk), "+" (plus sign), "-" (hyphen), "/" (forward slash), "=" (equals sign), "?" (question mark), "^" (circumflex accent), "_" (underscore), "`" (grave accent), "{" (left curly bracket), "|" (vertical line), "}" (right curly bracket), and "~" (tilde)
-The character "." (period aka dot) provided that it is not the first or last character in the local-part.
- "-" (hyphen) "." (period aka dot) "+" (plus sign) and "_" (underscore) are the most common symbols in email addresses.

3. Don't use sequential or repeating combinations, such as "12345678," "222222," "abcdefg," or adjacent letters on your keyboard, like "qwerty".

4. Don't use common words with letters replaced by numbers or symbols, such as "M1cr0$0ft" or "P@ssw0rd". Unfortunately, spammers know these tricks, too.

5. Pick one that's easy for you and your friends to remember, but is difficult for a spammer to guess. Unfortunately, using your firstname.lastname or firstinitiallastname is asking for trouble. Don't use words that could be found in the dictionary, in any language. Hackers use dictionaries to guess email addresses that are based on words in the dictionary, in a variety of languages, and using words spelled backwards.

See tomorrow's posting for Part 5 of How to Avoid Spam.

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