(no subject)

[flemmings]

Dear lj. Dear bloody lj. I wondered why I was suddenly getting absurd amounts of spam again and all of it in multiples. Well, it's that (lj username)@livejournal.com address they give you. They gave their sponsors access to it et voilà.

So to circumvent it, go to admin console and enter
set no_mail_alias 1
This does not stop comment notification, apparently, but I shall hope it stops my spam.

Comments

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

You make me glad I never accepted the free mail address ...

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Actually, it doesn't have anything to do with sponsors. The LJ Talk address is the same as the LJ email address, and it was posted in the open on everyone's userinfo page for quite a while. This was a stunningly stupid thing to do on LJ's part; that's how little email addresses get harvested by big, mean web-trawling bots. I got spam myself not long afterward.

Now there's an option on the Edit Profile page under Contact Info / Instant Messaging / LJ Talk to "Do not show field." That needs to be checked. You could also set your contact info to "Who can view your contact info?: Friends only."

Re, above, the email address is assigned automatically at signup, whether you choose to use it or not.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I don't remember being given the option of turning it down, but then I don't read fine print as much as I should.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Mhh- I thought the lj contact was in my info somewhere too, but never thought to check. My real address is there with spaces that I certainly didn't add because you're not allowed to, but I vaguely recall some option was given to make it unharvestable. But that was before Fell Apart bought the outfit.

However everyone was assigned that AIM thingy and not everyone got spam. Some people's metatags work better than others', clearly.

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

They used to have an option to break up your email address on the userinfo page, but that quietly disappeared at some point, possibly when the new lj style set in. I only noticed it when we started wondering at the deluge of spam and checked out the lj-talk contact info.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Oh cool. I had an email I didn't even know existed.

I presume it forwards to your regular email? In any case, I've gone and turned the display off.

Thanks!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

No problem. But I envy your spam catcher's abilities if you didn't notice a drastic increase these last few weeks.