Using a hash as your username

A basic spam filter

People I know have been starting to use "keyboard smashes" as usernames. You know, something like awe9pq325409awe@yahoo.com (I don't know if that's a real username, sorry to the owner if it is). This is in order to avoid spammers using a dictionary attack for sending email; in this case, the longer the better to avoid spam.

Which gave me an idea for reducing spam:

• Create a "public" username, such as "G0D".
• Run your "public" username through a hash (such as MD5 or SHA-1) to produce your "private" username. e.g., on Unix: echo -n "G0D" | sha1sum.
• Create an account on somewhere such as mail.yahoo.com with the "private" username (unfortunately, GMail only accepts 30 character usernames, so it won't do for this).
• Publish your public username to your friends, and how you generate the private one.
• Never publish the private username.

Well, I created one on Yahoo mail, try emailing me at

echo `echo -n '/lib' | sha1sum | cut -d' ' -f1`@yahoo.com.au

.

Okay, so it's probably not original, and probably not that useful, but fun nonetheless. Not nearly as useful as Yahoo mail's AddressGuard (tm), which lets you create disposable email addresses.

[oops, updated to fix the email address, I'm using yahoo.com.au!]

Or alternatively try this address

echo `echo -n /lib | sha1sum | cut -c1-30`@gmail.com