Bombs Away

There is a thing in our high-tech world that is called the ’email bomb’. Officially, the description of this weapon is here but to save you some time, I’ll describe it: It is when someone with tech skills uses their abilities for evil and uses a program (bot) to sign you up on every website it can all over the world so you end up with 30,000+ emails in your inbox. Your email blows up. Boom.

No matter how well you protect your computer, manage your email, enable two-factor security, change your password regularly… there is no stopping an email bomb. All the bomber needs is your email and 30,000 web administrators who don’t give a crap when their site is abused to send out emails by the bomber’s bot.

On Aug 15 at about noon, I got bombed. It has not been a pleasant experience.

Once your email is signed up on all those sites you didn’t want, you can expect years of spam to come from them and all the folks who buy their contact lists. For someone like me (who jumps when my phone beeps with every notification) the bombed email account is rendered useless. Sure, we can enable spam-detection filters and design complicated filters and rules, that’s true – but some stuff will always get through to the inbox.

The only solution was to change my email, which I have. It’s all over this site. I suppose I could try to obfuscate it for the next spider or culling tool, but the spammers will have my new address soon enough.

I wonder if there is a phone number bomb…