Joe Jobbed

This morning, like most mornings, my routine began with rolling out of bed and kicking on the computer.

No, I’m not kidding, but I am exaggerating a bit. I really just use my big toe (sometimes right, sometimes left, depends on mood) to depress the power button.

And wouldn’t you be depressed if a big toe came out of nowhere to squish you every morning? Thought so.

Hmm. You shouldn’t let me go off on weird tangents like that. Back to the story… I checked my email as usual. What was unusual is the proportion of email inbox contents between my new and old addresses. Main address? The usual dozen or so missives, all but two being spam. Old legacy almost defunct address? More than sixty messages… all of them bounced spam!

The hell?

Until this morning, I didn’t know what a “Joe Job” is. Consider me edu-mah-cated. And annoyed. I mean, who the hell would use that address for anything? Argh. (Mind you, at least they didn’t use my current address!)

Also consider me inspired (at long last!) to get GnuPG installed on my home computer. From now on, missives from my main address will be signed. (Okay, as soon as I can make the same thing happen on my computer at work… which shouldn’t be all that tough.)

My public key is right here, thanks.

Signing my emails won’t prevent another Joe Job scenario, but it will allow me to state with much more authority which emails are really from me and which aren’t. This makes me happier. Dammit.

Comments

2 responses to “Joe Jobbed”

  1. GreyDuck Avatar

    Incorrect. My public key can only be used to verify the signatures of emails signed with my private key, which I do NOT give out (for obvious reasons). One cannot sign or encrypt an email by using my public key.

  2. Lilith Avatar
    Lilith

    Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but by putting your public key online, couldn’t anyone use that in sending mail that pretends to be from you to mess you up somehow?