If possible, use a different e-mail address for every website.

Certain website hosts allow the ability for users to setup an infinite number of e-mail addresses. While this might not seem beneficial, they also provide the ability to forward those e-mail addresses to a main account or any other account. If anything needs to be responded to someone can use the main account, but for most things it’s not necessary. Signing up for something new at a store, give the e-mail address you intend to create when you get to a "safe" network and set it up when you're at that network.

So let’s say you’re signing up for Facebook, you could setup an e-mail address called fcb00k@yourdomain.com. Then if Facebook needs to contact you, then they can use that particular e-mail address. If you get crafty with your e-mail forwarding, you can make it so only certain important e-mails get sent to your mobile phone to cut down on all of the traffic that you receive. This also allows you to filter out a lot of the clutter without having a billion spam filters in whatever you're using as a mail client.

In the event of doom

If the system is hacked where you are signing up, let's say the database is hacked, and it contains your e-mail address, you’ll likely start receiving spam messages or worse, phishing messages from people attempting to trick you into giving away information. When you start to notice e-mails from fcb00k@yourdomain.com that aren’t from Facebook, then you’ll know that they either sold your name to someone else, or they were hacked. Also it will help you when you get Amex offers for your outstanding credit from fcb00k@yourdomain.com that you'll know they're likely not the real thing either.

They won't care

If they are hacked, don’t bother e-mailing them and telling them your brilliant e-mail naming convention and how you’ve noticed that you’re receiving e-mails from someone who is not them. They’re likely to send you a form letter response letting you know what spam is, and they’ll tell you that that have the best security team known to man who is working on their servers and in no way were they hacked. At some point you’ll see a press release about them being hacked, but rest assured it had nothing to do with you. It was likely do to some normal operating procedure that they were able to find the issue. Public relations, IT, and web operations rarely interact in most companies in regard to user feedback. That’s just how it works.

Fixing the issues 

When a site is hacked, because you're using this really cool method, then you only have to worry about changing that one e-mail address to a new one, (in order to stop the spam), then you can go on about your day. Oh yeah, change your password too. If they got your e-mail address they likely got your encrypted password, which is likely no longer encrypted.

New "Microsoft" Phising Scam

Today I received a phone call (Out of Area, Unlisted) from a guy with an Indian accent. He claimed to be from Microsoft and told me that they had received a message from my computer saying it was infected.

So I immediately replied:

"How did you get this phone number?"

His response:

"Because your ISP told us it was you and that it was your computer and when you register for Internet service they provide that information to us."

My retort (BSing of course):

"So Microsoft (someone who I haven't purchased anything from for 4 years) said my computer is infected, and you got my home phone number for my business account Internet provider?"

The guy hung up. I'm sure the rest of the phishing scam is that they are going to ask you to download something and install it to make sure your system is "clean." I myself am running an enterprise level anti-virus firewall (with subscriptions) and have AV installed on all of my Windows workstations and Virtual Machines.

According to Wikipedia:

Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

The term "Phishing" first came about because a telephone or phone was used to fish for information. So the "PH" from "Phone" replaced the "F" in fish. Despite the Wikipedia entry, it is actually a part of "Phreaking" and not just possibly due to phreaking because a lot of phone privilege escalation involves a question and answer session with the phone network provider. There are all sorts of articles about Phishing and Phreaking in the older issues of the 2600 Hacker Quarterly now available at Amazon as an Kindle magazine subscription.

If you have a Mac / Linux based machine only, I probably don't have to say this but you can tell them you know they're full of it. If you have a "PC," Microsoft will NEVER contact you to tell you that you have a virus. They as a company, unless you're paying for some security service directly from them, would never take the huge effort to police the Internet and tell everyone that they're sending out a virus. That's not one of their core business motives.

There are all sorts of things that can be downloaded knowingly or unknowingly off of the Internet that contain back doors (where people can get into your machine), viruses (that give out information), slave systems (where people can make your computer work for them), and root kits (so your anti-virus applications that you are hopefully using can not detect of remove them).


Remember to NEVER provide any personally identifiable information about yourself over the phone to ANYONE who calls you unprompted (unless you are expecting the call).