Six Days to Spam

I receive any and all e-mail sent to the arbyte.us domain. This enables me to use arbitrary addresses (in my domain) as read-only e-mail inboxes. If I sign up for something online and use a new e-mail address, I can filter mail based on the address they sent to, and I can also see who sells my address to spammers.

Last weekend I upgraded the operating system on one of my computers (from OpenBSD 3.9 to 4.3) and as I was doing that I also configured the system as a Tor relay. I invented a new e-mail address to be the administrative contact for the relay. The list of Tor relays and administrative contacts is available online (indeed, that's how clients find the relays) but this e-mail address has never been used anywhere else for any purpose.

Today, six days after I started the relay, I got my first spam. I have it on good authority that my contracting company is due a payment of US$15.5M from the Nigerian government. Awesome. :) Who knew you could make money on the internet?