Way To Cut Down On Spam

[EdInJapan]

I have seen on several posts where people have issues with SPAM (who doesn't). Just as a general FYI, I have used "Sneakemail" for years and have been very pleased. They have both "free" and "pay" varieties of their service.

 

In a nutshell, you give them your "real" email address, and they let you create any number of alias addresses that forward to your real address. So, when I have to register an email address with a shopping site, etc., I create a new alias and use that. Mail comes through fine (to my normal account since it is forwarded), and you can tell which alias it came from. So, if any SPAM starts coming through you can tell who gave away your email address and best of all you can just delete the alias if you want so that the flood of SPAM from that source will stop.

 

Their pay service allows you to register keywords so that you can make up alias addresses yourself without having internet access to their site. It's fantastic!

[TCH-Bruce]

You don't need to sign up with any external service you can handle this yourself through cPanel using the Forwarders function.

 

For any email address you want to use just create a forward for the address to your valid email address. When it starts receiving SPAM delete the forward.

[EdInJapan]

Thanks for the reply Bruce, and I apologize for taking so long with a thank you.

 

I appreciate the info on the forwarding system. I agree that you can get a similar effect, though at somewhat more effort. For many people, I think that will work fine. For me, some of the advantages of the Sneakemail method are as follows:

 

1. I can create an email address to give to someone on-the-fly, without internet access. (Example: If I were to give out an email address to you, I would probably give you "fromTCHBruce-mykeyword@sneakemail.com", where "mykeyword" is something I set up in advance to tell sneakemail where to forward mail. I could change the "fromTCHBruce" part to anything, and a unique email address is created. ) Using the cPanel forwarding method, one would have to set up many addresses in advance and then use them as needed. With the Sneakemail method, I can put something meaningful as the address so it is easier to track.

 

2. I can reply (with my real email address automatically cloaked) to the email forwarded by Sneakemail from any email software package. Sneakemail automatically links an email response to the original alias, and any "real" email info can be set to be replaced with "***". I am pretty sure if one were to use the cPanel forwarding method, the "real" email address would be pretty evident in a reply.

 

3. I can set Sneakemail to forward to multiple destination addresses. For me, this means that for something that I think might be "time critical", I can have the email forwarded to work, home, AND my cell phone. (As far as I can tell, cPanel only allows 1 forward per email alias.)

 

These are just my reasons. I am sure others may just want to have two or three "throwaway" addresses, for which the cPanel forward method would work just great.

 

Thank you again for the reply and info. Hmmmm. I wonder if there is a script similar to Sneakemail out there somewhere so that my email addresses could all have my own domain on them...

[TCH-Bruce]

2. I can reply (with my real email address automatically cloaked) to the email forwarded by Sneakemail from any email software package. Sneakemail automatically links an email response to the original alias, and any "real" email info can be set to be replaced with "***". I am pretty sure if one were to use the cPanel forwarding method, the "real" email address would be pretty evident in a reply.

Easy to do, set up another account in your email client for that address, just set the POP3 info to your valid account. You can then send as the alias. But normally I don't send email with my throw away addresses, only use them on web forms.

 

3. I can set Sneakemail to forward to multiple destination addresses. For me, this means that for something that I think might be "time critical", I can have the email forwarded to work, home, AND my cell phone. (As far as I can tell, cPanel only allows 1 forward per email alias.)

 

You just define another forward for the same address. That's how I create group forwards.

 

You are correct, if you are using more than three or four at a time the cPanel solution may not be effective for you.

[EdInJapan]

Thanks for all the information Bruce!

 

I think the cPanel approach will work great for my kids, who really just need one "real" address and a couple of "spam catcher" addresses. I can set up their email clients as you suggest. I appreciated your information on setting up SpamAssassin that you posted elsewhere as well.