Spammer detection tip for Gmail users

I learned today about a feature in Gmail that allows you to “tag” your email address when you give it to someone or submit it somewhere online. If I were to sign up for a mailing list or service, and I want to know if they might be giving away my address to spammers, I just enter my address as john+goaheadandspammeasshole@example.com. Whenever I receive an email to that address and it didn’t come from the service or site that I gave it to, I know that the address was “leaked”. I can then make a Gmail filter that catches all messages sent to john+goaheadandspammeasshole@example.com that will mark those messages as spam or simply label them appropriately.

You can also use the “+tagword” to help you sort different categories of emails. For example, I might submit john+bills@example.com” as my phone service address or for online purchases. It makes it easier later on to sort the types of email I get.

Thanks again Google for not being evil.

More tips here. http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html

My bandwidth test on the BoltBus

I’m riding to NYC for the JoCo show and taking the BoltBus which has wifi access. It technically does connect, but I also tried using my iPhone 3G tethering through PDANet. Here are the speedtest.net results.

• BoltBus
  
• iPhone 3G tethering
  

There’s a college girl behind me who has been going on for at least an hour on her cell with a friend about how she doesn’t like the way the jeans she bought last year look anymore, so she needs new ones. She’s not taking clues from the people around that we really don’t care. … ahh, someone just said it directly. Thank you.