seeking free email forwarding service with flexible addressing

schmoe · 23 Jan 2010, 01:59 PM

I am looking for a free email forwarding service similar to endjunk.com with the following features:

- Free
- Provides flexible addressing that I control (ie anythinghere@schmoe.endjunk.com or schmoe+anythinghere@endjunk.com), and ability to use the flexibility without having to set it up in advance at the forwarding site.
- Minimum configuration
- Not on every email providers black list (downside of endjunk)
- Reasonable up time

e4ward.com seems to be the best one so far. Any other suggestions?

jeffpan · 23 Jan 2010, 08:19 PM

akapost.com

janusz · 23 Jan 2010, 11:35 PM

The free version of akapost offers only one 'anonymous' address redirected to/from one 'real' address.

**ReuvenNY** · 24 Jan 2010, 12:31 AM

Doesn't Gmail allow + addressing? (schmoe+anythinghere@gmail.com)

janusz · 24 Jan 2010, 12:38 AM

Yes, it does

xmailer · 24 Jan 2010, 01:30 AM

The subdomain addressing method has long seemed far superior to "plus" addressing, since many don't seem to accept the latter as a properly formatted email address. In fact, just yesterday I was opening a new AOL email address for a friend, and decided to use one of my own Gmail addresses as a temporary alternate email address in the AOL signup form, using a plus address with the first name of the person I was opening the account for after the plus sign, but AOL wouldn't accept it as a "properly formatted" email address.

janusz · 24 Jan 2010, 01:38 AM

Of course both 'plus addressing' and 'subdomain addressing' have a potential weakness: the real address can be trivially deducted from either by a malicious human (and by an automated address harvester as well).

From this point of view 'disposable' addresses, of the type offered e.g. by sneakemail, are very safe to use.

schmoe · 24 Jan 2010, 01:47 AM

One small downer on gmail as filter and forwarder - Gmail does not give you the ability to filter based on bcc. So if you have a gmail filter to forward messages sent to schmoe+anything@gmail.com to schmoe@realaddress.com, it will only work if the message has the address on the TO or CC line, and not on the BCC line.

It is a very minor thing, certainly not a show stopper.

schmoe · 24 Jan 2010, 01:55 AM

Quote:

Of course both 'plus addressing' and 'subdomain addressing' have a potential weakness: the real address can be trivially deducted from either by a malicious human (and by an automated address harvester as well).

From this point of view 'disposable' addresses, of the type offered e.g. by sneakemail, are very safe to use.

Yes, this is more of a disadvantage for big, well known services.

As an endjunk user (when the service is actually working), once every couple of months I would get pelted with hundreds of blowback spam messages, or whatever the term is for when your address is fraudulently used as the source of spam mail, and you receive hundreds of responses informing you that such-n-such address doesn't work, or such-n-such person was on vacation. Each of addresses that were used were addresses that I had never used before. The spammer knew that endjunk addresses could be twisted in any form.

xmailer · 24 Jan 2010, 01:56 AM

While I didn't realize that it was blacklisted by many, as the OP said, endjunk.com has long had a security measure of a sort against "simple" harvesting by allowing the user to optionally set a "pass phrase", or a character string which must be in the user name part of every newly-created address in order for it to be accepted. While that doesn't provide absolute security against the creation of "bogus" addresses by a third party, it does make it somewhat more difficult. They also give the user the option to not allow email addresses to be created "on the fly", but only allowing addresses which are actually explicitly created by the user him/herself in the endjunk account interface.

The only problem is, these options don't seem to work reliably as advertised.

Otherwise, while it may have its shortcomings, and like any "smaller" service, who knows how long it may continue to have a "limited" free level of service, another one which works similar to Endjunk (at least in being based on subdomain addressing rather than plus-addressing, and allowing the user to create addresses "on the fly", although their other features differ somewhat), is http://www.otherinbox.com/.

kelly · 24 Jan 2010, 02:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by schmoe

One small downer on gmail as filter and forwarder - Gmail does not give you the ability to filter based on bcc.

Yes, it does!

schmoe · 24 Jan 2010, 03:51 AM

Quote:

Yes, it does!

Cool... thanks...

jeffpan · 24 Jan 2010, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReuvenNY

Doesn't Gmail allow + addressing? (schmoe+anythinghere@gmail.com)

That's so easy to scratch the real email from the "anonymous" gmail.

Quote:

# cat gmail.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
while(<DATA>) {
s/\+[^@]+//; print;
}

__DATA__
someone+anything@gmail.com
sometwo+abc123@gmail.com
somethree+anonymous@gmail.com
somefour+nospam@gmail.com

# ./gmail.pl
someone@gmail.com
sometwo@gmail.com
somethree@gmail.com
somefour@gmail.com

xmailer · 24 Jan 2010, 12:07 PM

I've never considered plus-addressing of any great use in "cloaking" a Gmail address, but when I have used it (which has been very rarely) it has generally been more for the purpose of helping to expedite sorting, etc. via the filters.

23 Jan 2010, 01:59 PM	#1
schmoe Essential Contributor Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 385	seeking free email forwarding service with flexible addressing I am looking for a free email forwarding service similar to endjunk.com with the following features: - Free - Provides flexible addressing that I control (ie anythinghere@schmoe.endjunk.com or schmoe+anythinghere@endjunk.com), and ability to use the flexibility without having to set it up in advance at the forwarding site. - Minimum configuration - Not on every email providers black list (downside of endjunk) - Reasonable up time e4ward.com seems to be the best one so far. Any other suggestions?

23 Jan 2010, 08:19 PM	#2
jeffpan The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Hong Kong Posts: 2,531 Representative of: tls-mail.com	akapost.com

23 Jan 2010, 11:35 PM	#3
janusz Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: EU Posts: 5,016	The free version of akapost offers only one 'anonymous' address redirected to/from one 'real' address.

24 Jan 2010, 12:31 AM	#4
ReuvenNY Moderator Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: New York Posts: 4,278	Doesn't Gmail allow + addressing? (schmoe+anythinghere@gmail.com)

24 Jan 2010, 12:38 AM	#5
janusz Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: EU Posts: 5,016	Yes, it does

24 Jan 2010, 01:30 AM	#6
xmailer Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: USA Posts: 5,485	The subdomain addressing method has long seemed far superior to "plus" addressing, since many don't seem to accept the latter as a properly formatted email address. In fact, just yesterday I was opening a new AOL email address for a friend, and decided to use one of my own Gmail addresses as a temporary alternate email address in the AOL signup form, using a plus address with the first name of the person I was opening the account for after the plus sign, but AOL wouldn't accept it as a "properly formatted" email address.

24 Jan 2010, 01:38 AM	#7
janusz Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: EU Posts: 5,016	Of course both 'plus addressing' and 'subdomain addressing' have a potential weakness: the real address can be trivially deducted from either by a malicious human (and by an automated address harvester as well). From this point of view 'disposable' addresses, of the type offered e.g. by sneakemail, are very safe to use.

24 Jan 2010, 01:47 AM	#8
schmoe Essential Contributor Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 385	One small downer on gmail as filter and forwarder - Gmail does not give you the ability to filter based on bcc. So if you have a gmail filter to forward messages sent to schmoe+anything@gmail.com to schmoe@realaddress.com, it will only work if the message has the address on the TO or CC line, and not on the BCC line. It is a very minor thing, certainly not a show stopper.

24 Jan 2010, 01:56 AM	#10
xmailer Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: USA Posts: 5,485	While I didn't realize that it was blacklisted by many, as the OP said, endjunk.com has long had a security measure of a sort against "simple" harvesting by allowing the user to optionally set a "pass phrase", or a character string which must be in the user name part of every newly-created address in order for it to be accepted. While that doesn't provide absolute security against the creation of "bogus" addresses by a third party, it does make it somewhat more difficult. They also give the user the option to not allow email addresses to be created "on the fly", but only allowing addresses which are actually explicitly created by the user him/herself in the endjunk account interface. The only problem is, these options don't seem to work reliably as advertised. Otherwise, while it may have its shortcomings, and like any "smaller" service, who knows how long it may continue to have a "limited" free level of service, another one which works similar to Endjunk (at least in being based on subdomain addressing rather than plus-addressing, and allowing the user to create addresses "on the fly", although their other features differ somewhat), is http://www.otherinbox.com/.

24 Jan 2010, 12:07 PM	#14
xmailer Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: USA Posts: 5,485	I've never considered plus-addressing of any great use in "cloaking" a Gmail address, but when I have used it (which has been very rarely) it has generally been more for the purpose of helping to expedite sorting, etc. via the filters.