I've had my primary email address for many years, and I also get email through a number of work-related aliases, including editors at newsforge.com, roblimo at slashdot.org, and rmiller at osdn.com. So I get spam. Tons of spam. And I filter it all. I filter viruses, too, not because they can affect my Linux computer, but because they suck up bandwidth. And my virus email traffic now exceeds my spam traffic by a factor of at least two to one.

Like many people with widely-published email addresses, the amount of spam I get is staggering, often 1,000 pieces or more per day. Even if they were all from "legitimate" companies that followed the CAN-SPAM Act and included an "opt-out" mechanism, at this volume level opting out of all the spam databases would take several hours every day. And since the most common "opt-out" method involves a reply email containing "unsubscribe" or a similar command, it is usually not possible to opt out of spam coming through an email alias instead of directly to my roblimo.com account.

By Robin 'Roblimo' Miller at NewsForge.

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