Will Fastmail offer something similar to Yahoo's Address Guard?

[sky]

I just found that Yahoo Plus ($20 a year) is offering a feature called Address Guard which allows you to create unlimited number of disposable addresses. This is IMHO a very effective way to fight against spam. I wonder if FM will offer something similar to this? (I know FM has aliases, but the number of aliases is way too low to be used comfortably as disposable addresses.)

[sky]

Actually Yahoo Address Guard gives 500 (instead of unlimited) disposable addresses, but that should be way more than enough for most people.

[mcowger]

If you own your own domain, you can emulate it with wildcard addressing.

Or, if you dont, this will work:

Say you create 1 alias called 'aguard'. ThenYou can do this:

<anything>@aguard.fastmail.fm

Give out amazon@agaurd.fastmail.fm to amazon.com, etc. Works pretty closely, and only uses 1 alias.

[sky]

Actually not many people own their own domain for email, especially that it cost $50 a year ($40 for enhanced account, about $10 for domain).

There are also some problems regarding the subdomain feature using 1 alias.

1) The addresses are quite long

2) When you reply, it automatically uses ur default address, which exposes your identity and defeats the purpose of disposable addresses. So you will have to remember to change the from address every time, or create lots of personalities (but u are still limited by the # of personalities you have)

3) You also have to create rules manually to discard the address that got flooded by spam. It is not easy to filter (or is it even possible?) if the spammer bcc or puts your address on a mailing list. Otherwise, those spams will go straight to your inbox.

[mcowger]

Originally posted by sky
Actually not many people own their own domain for email, especially that it cost $50 a year ($40 for enhanced account, about $10 for domain).

I know. Just suggesting in case you already had it.

There are also some problems regarding the subdomain feature using 1 alias.

1) The addresses are quite long

Meh, given that you only hand them out once, and never have to type them again, I don't really see it as a problem.

2) When you reply, it automatically uses ur default address, which exposes your identity and defeats the purpose of disposable addresses. So you will have to remember to change the from address every time, or create lots of personalities (but u are still limited by the # of personalities you have)

I never reply to the messages I get from companies....

3) You also have to create rules manually to discard the address that got flooded by spam. It is not easy to filter (or is it even possible?) if the spammer bcc or puts your address on a mailing list. Otherwise, those spams will go straight to your inbox.

You absolutely can filter them using sieve or the rules interface. If you create folders with the same as the addresses you give out, they will be automatically sent to those folders rather than inbox.

I didn't give this solution as a perfect copy of that feature, only as a reasonably close and free emulation.

[/b]

[sky]

Originally posted by mcowger
I didn't give this solution as a perfect copy of that feature, only as a reasonably close and free emulation.

Agreed. Anyway, thanks for your suggestion.

Maybe FM can advertise this feature a bit more. I always thought that the subdomain feature only works on your usename, as documented by the online help, and didn't know it also works on aliases.

[rhabib]

Check out a free service called spam gourment:

www.spamgourmet.com

It is the equivalent of spamguard, and perhaps even easier to use since you don't have to set up the addresses in advance.

[FMRocks]

I think that making the use of an alias subdomain is a really great idea, as mcowger mentioned.

[sky]

I also agree that it is a nice suggestion

However, I just thought that there is a scenario that is quite dangerous

Say u have used
amazon@aguard.fastmail.fm
ebay@aguard.fastmail.fm
forum3@aguard.fastmal.fm
....etc

if one day u accidentally delete the alias, and someone else use it (aguard@fastmail.fm), then that means he/she can get access to all those addresses (potentially hundreds of addresses) that u have used. And future emails to those addresses can potentially contain your password, credit card number and other sensitive data

Is it kinda dangerous to do this, as you put all your eggs in one basket?

[FMRocks]

Yeah, but you should make changes into your Amazon etc. accounts when you change email addresses or delete an alias.

[brong]

Originally posted by sky
However, I just thought that there is a scenario that is quite dangerous

Say u have used
amazon@aguard.fastmail.fm
ebay@aguard.fastmail.fm
forum3@aguard.fastmal.fm
....etc

if one day u accidentally delete the alias, and someone else use it (aguard@fastmail.fm), then that means he/she can get access to all those addresses (potentially hundreds of addresses) that u have used. And future emails to those addresses can potentially contain your password, credit card number and other sensitive data

The same applies anywhere that you can reuse an email address. I'm reminded of one of the rants against Firstname.Lastname@company.com which tells a story of someone who was Common.Name2@company.com because Common.Name already existed in the company, and when Mr Common Name left, his email got automatically promoted to Common.Name@company.com, and he started receiving some _very_ confidential documents. It turns out Common.Name had been a high up VP in Europe somewhere.

Still, fastmail couldn't be anywhere near as generous with aliases and short addresses as we are and never allow them to be reused. Have you seen the sort of addresses people get @yahoo.com these days. I have 'retsem' (for reasons that are far too complicated to fit in this post), but only because I registered it back in '96 when yahoo was a little smaller.

Bron.

[JRobert]

Originally posted by sky
However, I just thought that there is a scenario that is quite dangerous
[...]
if one day u accidentally delete the alias, and someone else use it (aguard@fastmail.fm), then that means he/she can get access to all those addresses (potentially hundreds of addresses) that u have used. And future emails to those addresses can potentially contain your password, credit card number and other sensitive data

Another good reason to use SpamGourmet or a clone of it (it's open source).

-jeff-

[ezequielv]

Originally posted by sky
Actually not many people own their own domain for email, especially that it cost $50 a year ($40 for enhanced account, about $10 for domain).

It's just USD 40 per year (USD 70 for 2 years) if you host just one domain in Fastmail.

There are also some problems regarding the subdomain feature using 1 alias.

1) The addresses are quite long

Not if you use a short alias and a short domain. For instance, you could use a 5 character alias name and a short domain. For example: abcde.eml.cc. That's not very long.

2) When you reply, it automatically uses ur default address, which exposes your identity and defeats the purpose of disposable addresses. So you will have to remember to change the from address every time, or create lots of personalities (but u are still limited by the # of personalities you have)

Not necessarilly true. You can set up a personality to match the alias, so subdomain aliasing would work. There are some forum posts that explain how to do this, and I think that there's a description in the Fastmail.fm docs, too.

3) You also have to create rules manually to discard the address that got flooded by spam. It is not easy to filter (or is it even possible?) if the spammer bcc or puts your address on a mailing list. Otherwise, those spams will go straight to your inbox.

You always have to do something manually to handle spammed addresses. It's a matter of how much.

If you host your domain with fastmail.fm or if you are using a Fastmail.fm-hosted alias, setting a rule is pretty simple.

You can filter the using Sieve. For Fastmail's own domain aliases, you can use this:

envelope :contains "to" "alias+subfolders@domain"

for example:

envelope :contains "to" "abcde+amazon@eml.cc"

I don't know about using your own domain (I'm just a member), but I think it's about the same.

If you have a catchall alias and some of the addresses you have in your own domain gets spammed, you can filter on "received" headers, for example. There must be something better than the "received" header for own domains, but you get the idea

[John-Shaton]

If you just need a one off email address, you can use:

www.6url.com

You don't even have to register. Just use an email address along the lines of anything@6url.com and the account is created as soon as the email is received.

[hadaso]

Originally posted by sky
Actually not many people own their own domain for email, especially that it cost $50 a year ($40 for enhanced account, about $10 for domain)...

Actually it's $10 (or less) for the domain, and that's it. You can forward the domain's email to any mailbox. The $40 that an enhanced account costs are not for having and using the domain, but for hosting it with FastMail (and lots of other goodies). Just to use the domain's email addresses you don't need an enhanced acount!