A long time ago, around the time I started compiling my “Best Practices…” list, I began creating forwarders for ecommerce accounts to distinguish who was sending me solicitations and to be able to stop them easily. If you give someone your email address, say “joe@joe-co.com” then you have no idea where the soliciations are coming from and the only way to stop them is to increase your SpamAssassin rating—potentially losing false positives—or to get a new email address.
But, if you create “hsbc@joe-co.com,” and forward that to “joe@joe-co.com,” you can see who sold your email address and promptly disrupt the flow of spam by simply deleting the forwarder. Well, after a decade of online business through my company, ERA404, I have a veritable bee’s hive of forwarders floating around. And, as I’d like to do some house-keeping to keep them organized, I’ve decided to create a sub-domain to create easily visual recognition of what is an actual forwarder (i.e., don@ forwards to don.citarella@) and what is a spam-blocking forwarder (i.e., hsbc@ temporarily forwards to don.citarella@).
Here’s where I need your assistance. Fill in the blank:
Solicitor: “Sir, in order for me to process your order, you need to provide a valid email address.”
Me: So I’d like to provide them with: “[solicitor name]@_____.era404.com” where ______ is the word I’m seeking.
Here are a few that I thought of: @firewall, @temporary, @spam, @commerce, @solicitations, @junkmail, @junk, @delete, @block, @protect, @safe, @safety, @protection, @temp.
Here are a few suggestions by friends: @refuse, @trash, @scrap, @waste, and my personal favorite, @is-a-dirty-dirty-whore. (Imagine providing the following: “The email address is: hsbc@is-a-dirty-dirty-whore.joe-co.com“). Ah, it’s the little things in life. It truly is.
So I appeal to you, gentle readers. What would be the best spam-blocking sub-domain? While my preference is to go with @solicitations, I worry it will be too long: networksolutions@solicitations.joe-co.com. And does @trash have that certain je ne sais quoi that I want, so that solicitors think “I see what you did there. Well played, dear sir. Well played.“?
*@junk.*
Or maybe something that won’t make people raise their eyebrows, like *@out.*
Maybe “abuse” or “xabuse”.. i think that’s what AOL will put into the headers of mail deemed of a solicitous nature.
It would be funny to used something like: “false” or “unverified” or “temporary” — that way when asked “is this a temporary email account?” you can always fall back on, “No… it’s permanent” adding, “Until it’s sold or abused, then it will be documented, reported and deleted.”
@abuse seems the most logical though for me.
finding the middle ground between actually insulting them and having them not realize it at first is tough. you could also go for the “as difficult as possible” route like:
@dash.-dot
@ate8eight
or any of these: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/27MichaelWard.html
or how about a word that could be dirty but they can’t really be sure? like
@balls
or finally, something that they wouldn’t think of when listening, but they’d recognize when they saw it. kind of the opposite of the “heywood jablomi” effect, like:
@s-hit
@as-swipe
LOL@Matt. Your suggestions reminded me of this:
http://www.v1r4l.com/2010/02/12/dirty-balls/
I’m pleased to announce that ERA404 created BULC CLUB, the world’s first free social network dedicated to rid the world of spam, forever. One of its key features is incorporating forwarders based on the above practices. Take a look!