When I heard that the NSA was not only gobbling up email, but also hacking address books by the millions, my first impulse … well, it wasn’t to laugh.
But Carl-Bear, stepping into the breach, came up with a sweet little monkeywrench. This works because … wait for it … really … seriously the NSA can’t filter spam.
You can filter spam. Your grandmother can filter spam. Thunderbird can filter spam. Everybody and his uncle’s ISP can filter spam. The NSA … not so much.
So go. Monkeywrench away. Instead of abandoning Gmail and Hotmail and all those other snoop-ready services, you can, should you so choose, make the very, very best of them.
According to reports, NSA is also stealing peoples contact/address lists. We should probably assist them by making sure our contact lists have at least one entry for every letter A-Z with names, phone numbers, email addresses. Let NSA worry about doing the leg work to determine if they are real or not. Include plenty of government contact numbers and email addresses as well.
And it might not hurt to insert “‘); DROP TABLE PRISM; into all your emails.
What I read was that NSA was scooping up “address books” from instant message thinggummies. Seems simple… don’t create address books on line anywhere.
Can they scoop up the address book in your comptuer based email?
“Can they scoop up the address book in your comptuer based email?”
Not if you don’t have one. I cleaned my Personal Address Book and Contacts list off my email account some time ago and requested Thunderbird not to save _any_ email addresses or other personal info; also I keep a Rolodex spreadsheet only on my flash drive. If I can’t remember an eddress, that’s my tough luck, I have to stop and look it up.
Of course I can’t be sure what the computer does when I send an email, but that;s the best I can do. I have to trust Linux at some point.
To get into your local address book on your computer, they’d have to hack into your system. If they’ve done that, you already have bigger problems than the NSA just knowing with whom you correspond.
(Pat- deleting all your local client-side contacts and addys is pretty much pointless unless you also delete all your incoming and outgoing email. Those emails include addresses, of course.)
Bear – I do delete my in and out mail real fast, as soon as it’s no longer necessary to keep.
I’m glad to know for sure abut the address book. Thanks.
I’m having trouble pulling up Carl’s website. The connection just times out.
Claire, have you seen Ton Knapp’s latest project? “Dox & Shun”. I really like!
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2013/tle741-20131013-03.html
Had you come across this one yet? Useful, fun tool… http://nsa.motherboard.tv/