A 15 minute expert on avoiding SPAM.

I have long used a fee based Hotmail account to catch spam. I used it as my throw away address and rarely checked it. I have heard about throw away email addresses, and "on a kick," I decided to check them out for ease of use. I was wondering how easy or hard it would be to track one back to me, and was pleased to find this Slashdot discussion in my Google search. From looking at it, I can make more and better efforts to avoid spam in future, and save $20 bucks a year as well. Notably, if you have a Gmail account called "john.smith@gmail.com" and you use "john.smith+this_is_not_me@gmail.com" in an online form, any responses still come to "john.smith@gmail.com," BUT you will be able to know just exactly who it was that sent that one to you. One application of it is to use it like "distinctive ring," on your cell phone. The Slashdot reader that employed it that way, was using it to narc out spam sources. In an interesting commentary on the "sword and shield debate," there are online forms who are rejecting the new convention, probably by a bad default. I haven't figured out how to take that yet, but I did have to just sit and think about it. Hotmail: I've used you and abused you, and carried around a certain sense of guilt, with my yearly bill as a mere sop to my conscience. I'm going to cancel my subscription now, and ditch the associated online storage; now I'll just feel guilty about standing by and watching you go out of business.