Saturday, March 25, 2006

The law of large numbers: identical fake email addresses

Real.com was infamous for abusing users of their "free" audio clients. Spam, nagware, inline obnoxious ads, intrusive reminders, seizing file ownership, quasi-spyware -- the whole nine yards. Bad news.

Alas, the BBC uses RealAudio.

I'd heard RA had reformed out of desperation and litigation, so I downloaded the Mac client. You STILL have to provide an email address, so I provided my usual fake address: nospam@nospam.spa.

It was in use.

So I tried nospam@nospam.nospam.spa.

In use.

Then nospam.nospam@nospam.nospam.spa.

In use.

Finally nospam123.nospam@nospam.nospam.spa

That worked.

I want to know how many clones I have, and how many are a substantial improvement upon me.

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