Jim,,,
You may have a yahoo address, but do you actually check your email?


"Jim," wrote in message
...
Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 03:27:56 -0500, Richard J Kinch
wrote:


Bert Robbins writes:


It seems that quite a few of us have learned that USENET is a great
place to farm valid e-mail addresses and we have decided to reduct the
number of spam in our mailboxes by providing bogus e-mail addreses.

Keeping email addresses secret is a stupid anti-spam tactic, treating it
like a semi-password. An email address only performs to the extent you
spread it around to potential non-spam correspondents. As you do that,
it eventually become publicized somewhere, and then you're sunk.

This was obvious decades ago when secret unlisted telephone numbers were
known to be a useless method of stopping nuisance calls.

If you think you'll just restrict your correspondents to those who won't
leak your email address, then you aren't using email per se. A key
concept of email is that anyone can reach you with it.

If I can't publicize my email address and still control spam, then email
is a waste of time. We'd be better off using something other than email.
The very ideal of email is to publicize your address.


Why control it? Don't put yourself in the position to receive any.
When I open my email box, nothing is there that shouldn't be there.

Since I stopped using a valid email address on Usenet, which was about
five years ago, I haven't had the excessive spam that most get. And
forget the *remove-me* type tactics - the spam bot crawlers on Usenet
are much more intelligent than they were in the past.

If somebody is interested in conversing with me privately off list, I
am more than willing to accommodate them with a valid email address.

Just publishing one for the world to see is meaningless. Besides,
it's on my website which is easily findable and accessible if you go
looking.

One more comment. Jim probably has more than one email address. It's
interesting that his email is a Yahoo address which is probably a mail
drop. His own personal, family or other email address is just as
private as mine is.

Can't prove that of course, but I'd still bet it's true. :)

Later,

Tom

I do have another email address I use for friends and family -- Yahoo is
for newsgroups, but I am still able to be contacted by those who wish to
respond privately to any of my postings. I have no need to hide behind
fake addresses or remailers.