‘No Spam Challenge’

Cameron Kollwitz has set himself a new challenge - the 30 day no spam challenge - this challenge involves signing up for a new e-mail address, not publishing it anywhere on the web and singing up for various services that say they don’t sell your e-mail address for a period of 20 days.

The goal is to find out how many of those services actually do sell your e-mail address - he will write about it each day in his blog and eventually will write to each company he signed up for complaining about the spam - or at least that’s what I understand of it.

I love this idea - personally I have my own mailbox through my webhost so don’t really use free email addresses (although I do sign up for them) for anything other than signing up for other services - they do still fill up with spam though - despite not publishing the address or telling anyone other than these service providers.

I actually think this project could go a bit further than just Cameron’s brave attempt - I think we should all give it ago.

Head over to Yahoo, Google or Hotmail, sign up for a free account - don’t publish the address online but do sign up for as many services that promise not to sell your address as possible.

Then after ten days or so document the services you’ve signed up for and publish the volume of spam you’ve recieved.

If I wasn’t about to head off on holiday I would give it a go myself. In fact what I might try is the opposite - sign up and then publish the e-mail address on a single blog post - not tell anyone else or any other service about it and sit back and see how much spam I get in say 1 month.

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