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  • Combating spam with your Gmail ID

    Posted by thinkdj on July 8th, 2007
    17 Comments | 12,354 pageviews

    Gmail LOGO
    Did you know that Gmail doesn’t recognize dots (.) as characters within a username ? This means think.dj@gmail.com is the same as thinkdj@gmail.com for Gmail servers. OK, Great .. Now how’s that useful for me ?

    _
    We signup for tons of services a day, right from that online news subscription to that no-so-trusted site which said it needed your email ID to send the download link you just requested. Hmm.. what to do ?

    Well, for the not-so-trusted sites, just use an email alias with a pre positioned DOT. Adding FilterTake this example. I have to give my email ID [think.dj@gmail.com] to blogdirectories.com. But I suspect them on giving the email IDs to 3rd party services. So, I give my email ID as thinkd.j@gmail.com and I get the confirmation link.

    Now, I goto Gmail > Settings > Filter and create a filter for all mails with TO: containing “thinkd.j@gmail.com” to go to the trash OR apply a label. That way, I can find out which site gave out my email ID to the gazillion spammers out there.

    17 Responses »

    1. personal and business computers doesn’t need to have similar characteristics

    2. Tort King says:

      You can’t hack gmail. That is b.s. My computer guy said it isn’t possible. ticketslayer@gmail.com LOL

    3. Frederic Grabe says:

      You are a very smart person!

    4. Upendraya says:

      Hi there, I found your blog via Google while searching for first aid for a heart attack and your post looks very interesting for me.

    5. Keshavaya says:

      You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.

    6. I just tried myself. It’s really good.

      Thanks for Sharing. :-)

    7. kurt wismer says:

      unfortunately this does not work to stop spam, nor does the +keyword trick mentioned in the comments… the reason it doesn’t work is simple – all the information a person needs to extract the true gmail address is available in these aliases you’re creating… it’s trivial to reverse the obfuscation – in fact it’s trivial for a program to reverse the obfuscation, and since the tricks are so well known and gmail is so popular it’s virtually guaranteed that the email harvesters have already automated this task…

    8. morinn says:

      wow.. nice one! cheers ;)

    9. bob says:

      You can also try address+spam@gmail.com. Everything after the plus-sign is ignored, and you can use it to filter stuff too.

    10. thinkdj says:

      Hmm .. yeah ! But then you’ll have to log in and out of the accounts..

    11. Me says:

      Wouldn’t it just be easier to make a second (FREE, thanks to Gmail) address such as djsjunkmail@gmail.com? Then you could use that as the address to put on websites, etc.

    12. thinkdj says:

      @ Ganesh

      No dude ! Since gmail doesnt count the (.) , bot.hack, b.o.t.hack, bothack are all ACTUALLY “bothack”, which is unique. No one else can make that ID with (.) in b/w ..
      Rest assured !

      Cheers

    13. Ganesh APP says:

      Now that is scary. What if someone had an id say bot.hack@gmail.com.
      He would be getting my emails too. Have you actually tried this out ?? I can understand the spam folder. But why dont you get two such ids and check it out?

    14. Alfredo says:

      nice nice! :D i should have chosen a good username before. so if i create gmailcom@gmail.com it could also be gmail.com@gmail.com? cool!

    Trackbacks/Pingbacks

    1. [...] In the To field type hey.moe@gmail.com, click the “Next Step” button and check “Delete It” or any of the other options (see below). Now, click the “Create Filter” button to activate the filter. [Via Blogulate] [...]

    2. [...] In order to setup a Gmail Filter, under the Settings options, select the Filter tab and click on “Create a new filter”. In the To field type security.hacks@gmail.com, click the “Next Step” button and check “Delete It”. Now, click the “Create Filter” button to activate the filter. [Via Blogulate] [...]

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