Organization of effective protection of personal mailbox from spam
Preventive spam protection
The main idea on which this instruction is based is to reduce the risk of your email address falling into the spammers distribution database. I believe that here, as in medicine, the prevention of the “disease” is much more effective than the fight against the effects of “infection” (spam coming) and the viral nature of the leakage and dissemination of information about your mailbox is in favor of this analogy.
I will give a number of rules and steps that should be consistently taken to reduce the risk of "infection."
1. Preliminary steps
')
The rule of the uniqueness of the name of the secret box
Step 1. Buy yourself a domain name, if you don’t have one yet, or use an existing one. It will be needed to create virtual mail forwarding, because Unfortunately, none of the free mail systems provides such a service. If you do not have your own mail server, then you will also need to purchase some hosting for your mail (?). A domain name in the RU zone, for example, will cost you an average of 450 rubles. per year or 36 rubles. per month. Suppose you chose and bought a domain megiddo.ru .
Step 2. Get yourself a “secret” mailbox on a free postal service or on your domain, the name of which should not be communicated to anyone under any circumstances. It is from it that you will view incoming letters and write new ones. I recommend using Gmail as such a mailbox - firstly, this is one of the most powerful modern shareware mail systems, and secondly, it allows you to send letters through other mailboxes, using them as outgoing "gateways". Suppose your “secret” box is named maprecios@gmail.com .
2. Protection against address leaks with one-way communication with sites (robots send letters)
Step 3. For each website or service that you use, create a virtual mailing address in the administration panel for your domain’s mailboxes — like <site_name> @ megiddo.ru -> maprecios@gmail.com . Because in most cases for registration and use of the service, receiving news, updates, password reminders, comment alerts, etc. a fairly one-way communication "web site -> you", we have enough of the forwarding address. For example, if you buy books at books.ru , get yourself a shipment of books.ru@megiddo.ru and use it as your email account on books.ru . Thus, all letters sent by a robot or a books.ru employee to books.ru@megiddo.ru will get into your “secret” box, where you will read them.
What will it give? First, you will be able to control the paths of possible spam hit, so that if some of the sites leak information and your forwarding address gets to the spammers who use it, you will be able to set the leakage channel with a high probability as a minimum, contact the site administrators of the service and inform them about the leak. Secondly, if you decide to continue using this site, then create a new shipment with a slightly different name, for example, banal books.ru1@megiddo.ru , delete the old one, update the email address in the profile on books.ru - and continue to use the site without any spam. If, as a result of the infection, you decide to stop using the resource from which your shipping address has been leaked, then you simply delete the transfer.
Your shipments will act here as one-way incoming “gateways”, by controlling which you can easily identify the leakage channel and block your secret box from possible spam flow.
Thus, we built a spam protection system through incoming one-way "alert" messages.
3. Protection against leakage in two-way communication (correspondence with people)
In principle, the above steps eliminate the lion’s share of potential spam. But what about the rest of the correspondence in which living people participate?
The rest of the correspondence that you are conducting is most likely two-way - you not only receive letters, but send an answer, or even initiate the letter yourself.
I suggest that all channels of email communication with people be divided conditionally and logically into a number of zones with different levels of trust, namely:
Step 4. For each of the listed contexts, create a separate mailbox (not a shipment!), With your meaningful name. Configure that all letters arriving on these mailboxes are automatically forwarded to your “secret” box, which you use as a single point of sending and receiving letters. Also set up your “secret” box so that it allows you to send letters through the 4 boxes created above.
The names of such boxes can be:
Now, if you need to write a letter to someone from those people that you already know, you go to Gmail, type the text of the letter, choose the context (outgoing address) 1-3 and send the letter. If you need to write a letter to someone unfamiliar, or a stranger at all, you choose the context of 3-4, depending on the context and degree of trust.
In addition, in some cases for contexts 3-4, situations of the first contact are also possible, when it makes sense to use an additional forwarding mechanism.
For example, on your business card, you can specify the forwarding address biz-card@megiddo.ru , and after a new person contacts you on it, and you determine the appropriateness of the answer, use the existing 3-4 boxes for the answer.
Also, if necessary, publish your email on any site, use Step 3 - i.e. create a shipment specifically for this address, and when you receive a letter to him, reply to from 3-4. For example, if you need to post a job analyst on the site job.ru , create a transfer sa.job.ru@megiddo.ru and specify it in the ad.
Once again I will explain that the use of the forwarding mechanism allows you to easily disable the source of spam, if it is found, and quickly transfer this context to a new forwarding address without the need to physically start mailboxes and move letters between them.
The rule of non-disclosure of the secret mailbox and protection of forwarding addresses
In addition to contexts 1-4, you can enter any other set of necessary contexts and their corresponding real addresses. For example, I created and use the “Learning” context to communicate with my students.
This system works successfully for me. I would be glad if it works for you.
The main idea on which this instruction is based is to reduce the risk of your email address falling into the spammers distribution database. I believe that here, as in medicine, the prevention of the “disease” is much more effective than the fight against the effects of “infection” (spam coming) and the viral nature of the leakage and dissemination of information about your mailbox is in favor of this analogy.
NB: Analysis of the main causes of the "infection" of the mailbox
I will give a number of rules and steps that should be consistently taken to reduce the risk of "infection."
1. Preliminary steps
')
The rule of the uniqueness of the name of the secret box
When you enter a new mailbox, ask it a unique, non-vocabulary name.
Step 1. Buy yourself a domain name, if you don’t have one yet, or use an existing one. It will be needed to create virtual mail forwarding, because Unfortunately, none of the free mail systems provides such a service. If you do not have your own mail server, then you will also need to purchase some hosting for your mail (?). A domain name in the RU zone, for example, will cost you an average of 450 rubles. per year or 36 rubles. per month. Suppose you chose and bought a domain megiddo.ru .
Step 2. Get yourself a “secret” mailbox on a free postal service or on your domain, the name of which should not be communicated to anyone under any circumstances. It is from it that you will view incoming letters and write new ones. I recommend using Gmail as such a mailbox - firstly, this is one of the most powerful modern shareware mail systems, and secondly, it allows you to send letters through other mailboxes, using them as outgoing "gateways". Suppose your “secret” box is named maprecios@gmail.com .
2. Protection against address leaks with one-way communication with sites (robots send letters)
Step 3. For each website or service that you use, create a virtual mailing address in the administration panel for your domain’s mailboxes — like <site_name> @ megiddo.ru -> maprecios@gmail.com . Because in most cases for registration and use of the service, receiving news, updates, password reminders, comment alerts, etc. a fairly one-way communication "web site -> you", we have enough of the forwarding address. For example, if you buy books at books.ru , get yourself a shipment of books.ru@megiddo.ru and use it as your email account on books.ru . Thus, all letters sent by a robot or a books.ru employee to books.ru@megiddo.ru will get into your “secret” box, where you will read them.
What will it give? First, you will be able to control the paths of possible spam hit, so that if some of the sites leak information and your forwarding address gets to the spammers who use it, you will be able to set the leakage channel with a high probability as a minimum, contact the site administrators of the service and inform them about the leak. Secondly, if you decide to continue using this site, then create a new shipment with a slightly different name, for example, banal books.ru1@megiddo.ru , delete the old one, update the email address in the profile on books.ru - and continue to use the site without any spam. If, as a result of the infection, you decide to stop using the resource from which your shipping address has been leaked, then you simply delete the transfer.
Your shipments will act here as one-way incoming “gateways”, by controlling which you can easily identify the leakage channel and block your secret box from possible spam flow.
Thus, we built a spam protection system through incoming one-way "alert" messages.
3. Protection against leakage in two-way communication (correspondence with people)
In principle, the above steps eliminate the lion’s share of potential spam. But what about the rest of the correspondence in which living people participate?
The rest of the correspondence that you are conducting is most likely two-way - you not only receive letters, but send an answer, or even initiate the letter yourself.
I suggest that all channels of email communication with people be divided conditionally and logically into a number of zones with different levels of trust, namely:
Family context - your family, the highest level of trust.
Friendly context - your friends, high level of trust.
Business context - your business contacts, the average level of trust.
Public context - all other communications, low level of trust.
Step 4. For each of the listed contexts, create a separate mailbox (not a shipment!), With your meaningful name. Configure that all letters arriving on these mailboxes are automatically forwarded to your “secret” box, which you use as a single point of sending and receiving letters. Also set up your “secret” box so that it allows you to send letters through the 4 boxes created above.
The names of such boxes can be:
Family - masik@megiddo.ru (Masik is your family nickname).
Friendly - masta@megiddo.ru (Masta is your friendly nickname or network pseudonym).
Business - petrov-vodkin@megiddo.ru (Petrov-Vodkin - this is your real name).
Public - writemebackandforth@megiddo.ru (WriteMeBackAndForth is just an impersonal humorous phrase).
Now, if you need to write a letter to someone from those people that you already know, you go to Gmail, type the text of the letter, choose the context (outgoing address) 1-3 and send the letter. If you need to write a letter to someone unfamiliar, or a stranger at all, you choose the context of 3-4, depending on the context and degree of trust.
In addition, in some cases for contexts 3-4, situations of the first contact are also possible, when it makes sense to use an additional forwarding mechanism.
For example, on your business card, you can specify the forwarding address biz-card@megiddo.ru , and after a new person contacts you on it, and you determine the appropriateness of the answer, use the existing 3-4 boxes for the answer.
Also, if necessary, publish your email on any site, use Step 3 - i.e. create a shipment specifically for this address, and when you receive a letter to him, reply to from 3-4. For example, if you need to post a job analyst on the site job.ru , create a transfer sa.job.ru@megiddo.ru and specify it in the ad.
Once again I will explain that the use of the forwarding mechanism allows you to easily disable the source of spam, if it is found, and quickly transfer this context to a new forwarding address without the need to physically start mailboxes and move letters between them.
The rule of non-disclosure of the secret mailbox and protection of forwarding addresses
If you need to publish your contact email on any site, NEVER specify the names of these mailboxes, only the addresses of shipments. In addition, when publishing, make sure that email addresses are protected when the page is displayed in a technical way. If there is no certainty about technical protection, distort the forwarding address so that the human reader can understand it.If you need to publish a contact email on your website, use technical methods of protection, or replace the @ symbol with some other set of letters that allow the person to understand what the correct address looks like (sending).
In addition to contexts 1-4, you can enter any other set of necessary contexts and their corresponding real addresses. For example, I created and use the “Learning” context to communicate with my students.
This system works successfully for me. I would be glad if it works for you.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/14852/
All Articles