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F***ing Spam
It's not often that I really feel like swearing, but "good grief" hardly seems to cover my spam situation anymore. Since the last time I checked my email today (about 6 hours) I got over 200 spam messages. That's ... absurd. The trouble is, I can't just categorically delete everything except the ones that get filtered to other folders (which is what happens with most of my "expected" mail from known email addresses) because I do get unsolicited mail of a business type: fan letters, orders and stuff. But I'm thisclose to putting a note wherever I give out my email address, such as on my website, asking people who write to me about Raven's Children and Kismet to use a certain header line (such as "Raven's Children" or "Kismet") and then just deleting anything that doesn't have the header. I know that I would probably miss a few important emails that way. But goddamn ... I'm tired of wasting my time sorting through hundreds of messages a day that are manipulative, pointless, intelligence-insulting and/or obscene. My time is more important to me than that.
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Wow ... thanks for all the suggestions. My web host does have SpamAssassin (those 200 messages a day are just the ones that get through that!). It also has an optional spam blocker at an additional charge that I'm thinking about trying. I've actually cut the spam back down to reasonable levels just by disallowing emails that aren't to a specific address at my web host. (i.e. it used to be, if someone sent an email to "blah@laylalawlor.com" it would get shuffled into my main email box. Now it just gets trashed.) It's funny how compared to 250 spams per day, 60 seems downright reasonable, when I used to think 30 was way too many!
I like that little javascript to keep email addys from getting spam-spidered. I may use that -- or else implement a formmail script ... I hate to do that because I generally don't like using them; it feels like my email is just getting shuffled off into the void. But if it keeps me from getting deluged with spam, it'd be worth it, I suppose.
At least you've gotten me thinking outside the box I was in. Thank you!!