Anti-spam measures in Mail

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primrose - 31 Aug 2007 18:15 GMT

I want to give different email addresses to my contacts so that, when
one of them lets a spammer get the address I have given to that contact,
I can change that address without having to tell all my other contacts.
So, if my domain is username.me.uk.invalid [without the invalid,
obviously] and I send an email to Fred, I want Fred to see the email as
coming from Fred@username.me.uk.invalid so that he will use that address
when replying. I can fix it with my ISP so that email sent to lots of
different addresses will all arrive in the same mailbox.

But how do I manage this within Mail? As far as I can see, Mail requires
each outgoing email to be sent from an existing account. In the
"Account" field of the new message it gives you a drop-down list of the
accounts you have set up, so that you can choose one. It doesn't seem to
be possible to insert an address which does not belong to any existing
account. If that's right, presumably I have to create a separate account
within Mail (as well as all the aliases with my ISP) for each contact.
Am I missing something here? There must be a cunning way round the
problem which I'm too dim to see.

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Oassive - 31 Aug 2007 18:32 GMT

> I want to give different email addresses to my contacts so that, when
> one of them lets a spammer get the address I have given to that contact,
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> Am I missing something here? There must be a cunning way round the
> problem which I'm too dim to see.

The feature your refering to with your ISP, as I undestand is a
catch-all address. You MAY be able to create a rule for every adderss
that has been spammed, by telling Mail to block everything 'to' a
certain address. I've personally never tried that, so I can comment on
it's effectiveness. However, here's another approach, it's not a
feature of Mail, but it might solve your problem. I use a DEA account
at http://www.e4ward.com/, you can read up on it at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_e-mail_address .

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primrose - 31 Aug 2007 21:24 GMT

> > I want to give different email addresses to my contacts so that, when
> > one of them lets a spammer get the address I have given to that contact,
[quoted text clipped - 23 lines]
> at http://www.e4ward.com/, you can read up on it at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_e-mail_address .

Blimey, I was hoping for one solution and I got two! Thanks, I'll bear
this possibility in mind, but for starters I'll try the
multiple-addresses-for-one-Mail-account solution.

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Peter Ilieve - 31 Aug 2007 19:12 GMT

>I want to give different email addresses to my contacts so that, when
>one of them lets a spammer get the address I have given to that contact,
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>Am I missing something here? There must be a cunning way round the
>problem which I'm too dim to see.

The thing you are missing (and it's easy to miss) is that one
account can have multiple email addresses associated with it.
If you go to the Account Information bit of the Accounts
preferences you can then enter multiple email addresses
in the Email Address field, separated by commas. These addresses
then appear in the drop-down list in the compose window.

When I wanted to do this I ended up looking in Mail's plist
file, saw the EmailAddresses element in each MailAccount
item was an array, so edited the plist file to add more
addresses. When i looked in Mail's preferences afterwards
I saw the comma separated list. This is probably well
documented somewhere, but who reads that? :-)

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Peter Ilieve peter@aldie.co.uk

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primrose - 31 Aug 2007 21:12 GMT

> In article
> <primula.vulgaris-090809.18155731082007@plusnet.vsrv-ams.supernews.net>,
[quoted text clipped - 25 lines]
> I saw the comma separated list. This is probably well
> documented somewhere, but who reads that? :-)

That's brilliant! Thank you so much. I did read (ok, skim through) the
chapter on Mail in The Missing Manual, but couldn't find anything.

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Mac Forum / Country Specific / UK Mac Group / August 2007

Anti-spam measures in Mail