I don't like spam. I don't see it as a necessary part of using email.
It is something we can and should fight.
My main personal tool against spam is a white-list of anyone I have had an email exchange with in the last ten years. If you mail ash@videdot.com, and you or your domain is on the list, it comes straight through.
If you are not on the list, then your mail will almost certainly be ignored. There are a few ways around this:
- Magic words
- There are a few magic words you can put in your subject line to get through to me. Most of them are semi-secret, and they change now and then.
- Now, if you want to promise you will not send spam - that is your mail will be neither bulk, nor an unsolicited commercial invitation - then please put the word
quatloo somewhere in the subject line. If you break this agreement, I reserve the right to charge you forty UK pounds sterling, sixty euro or eighty US dollars per message received, whichever I prefer.
- Special addresses
- There are a number of other addresses, which I never post online which come straight to me. I hand them to people I meet out & about so we can keep in touch.
- I also give different email addresses to different companies. This helps with detecting phishing attacks, and lets me see when companies like Goldfish, Swinton Insurance and Eclipse Internet manage to leak or sell my details to spammers or phishers.