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anj 18 Apr 2003 08:20 AM

spamgourmet.com
 
There are lots of useful threads here about different ways to combat spam. Spamgourmet.com has been mentioned in other threads, but I think it deserves its own. So here is a thread just for discussing and sharing tips about <http://www.spamgourmet.com/>.

anj 18 Apr 2003 08:37 AM

Pros and cons of spamgourmet
 
Features:
1. Effective! Elimates spam
Sends only a set number of messages to each address
2. **Easy** setup or choose advanced mode
Good for both newbies and experts.
3. No maintenance
Sign up a username, set up your options, & never go back to their website. The rest is automatic.
4. Create as many spam addresses as you want for free. Give out any email address containing your username@spamgourmet.com
5. Automatically creates new addresses when email is received
with your username
6. Can create/delete secret watchwords to block spammers trying
anything.x.username@spamgourmet.com
7. Lifespan of address is limited to preset # of messages
8. Doesn't reveal your real email address
9. Forget your registration email address? It keeps track of all the addresses created within your account listed on one easy page.

Disadvantages?
1. Not good for personal email (duh!)
2. Not an all-in-one solution
3. Doesn't notify the senders of unwanted messages that their emails weren't revealed.

anj 18 Apr 2003 08:58 AM

How it works
 
1. Sign up for a username and
Give it a real email address to forward your mail to

When you want to use a disposable email address:

2. Make up a new address* like this:
anything.x.user@spamgourmet.com

"anything" should be unique for each new address
"x" specifies how many mails you want to receive at the address (20 max)**
"user" is your username at spamgourmet

That's it!
* No need to go to spamgourmet to create an email address. It is created automatically when someone send a message to:
anything.x.user@spamgourmet.com

** All mails after your preset maximum "x" are automatically deleted and the address expires.

Examples:
1. Register at nytimes.com for a maximum of 2 messages:
nyt.2.user@spamgourmet.com

All mails after 2 are automatically deleted.

2. Register at Amazon to receive all messages and ONLY messages from the amazon domain:
ama.domain.user@spamgourmet.com

The domain of first sender (should be Amazon!) who contacts you at this address will be recorded at spamgourmet. All messages from this domain will be accepted. (If this is later a problem you can log into spamgourmet to block the address. Otherwise, you never need to log in.)

<<Sorry to have a conversation with myself here, just thought this would be more organized in separate messages. I'll shut up now. Please join in!>>

hadaso 18 Apr 2003 09:32 AM

Quote:

1. Not good for personal email (duh!)
Actually I do use it for some sort of personal email, mainly when sending email to family/friends that is likely to be forwarded and forwarded and forwarded... for instance if I would send a picture of a bike I would use something like bike18apr03.ofer.hadaso@spamgourmet.com in the "From:" field (the only disadvantage of using my first name in the middle field is that since my first name begins with an O I would get 15 mails before the address expires. My parents' fault...)

Another important feature is reverse forwarding: not only does spamgourmet get your mail and forwards it to your email account as any forwarding service. When you reply the email is forwarded back to the sender through spamgourmet and the sending ("From:") address is replaced by the spamgourmet address the sender knows. (Other services also offer reverse forwarding. sneakemail.com is one).

Quote:

3. Doesn't notify the senders of unwanted messages that their emails weren't revealed
This is a real issue. I don't worry so much about the spammer not being warned. I am more worried about the ability of the service to continue working this way in the longrun. It basically means that spamgourmet accepts the whole message first, and then either discards or forwards it. When time passes, and given the nature of use of these addresses, i.e., mainly in situations where they are likely to end up spammed to death, so much spam might arrive and consume bandwidth that the service wouldn't be able to stay free, or even work at all. For this to be avoided the way the blocking works should be changed to blocking BEFORE the body of the email is received. This would reduce bandwidth considerably, and would also produce SMTP error messages, so senders would be notified that the message bounced. Meanwhile, it shouldn't discourage anyone from using this service for creating self-distructing addresses.

It is certainly the most convenient way of creating disposable self distructing addresses (except that these addresses are horribly long!)

Killer 19 Apr 2003 12:45 AM

I find the service very confusing too... I prefer to use mailshell instead which is a paid service now... :(

hadaso 19 Apr 2003 07:05 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Killer
I find the service very confusing too...
I don't understand what can be confusing about spamgourmet.

You visit the site once. You chose a username and password and provide an email address where your email will be forwarded, and then you close yopur browser window and don't have to ever come back.

All your infinite number of addresses are ready for use. You just need to give out addresses. They are all in the form word.code.username@spamgourmet.com .
* username is your username.
* word identifies this specific address and can be whatever you want.
* code is a number or a word and is used the first time an email is sent to the address to start the countdown till it expires. If it's a word then it's first letter serves as a number (A for one, B for two etc.) The number determines how many messages the address will receive. There are some other special codes like "domain" to do more things, but I cannot tell you anything about them since I never used them.

So all you have to do if you register at say spammer.inc is give them spammerinc.1.yourname@spamgourmet.com and them you get their confirmation email and nothing more (or use 2 or 3 instead of 1 to be on the safe side.).

anj 23 Apr 2003 06:24 AM

PROs & "CON"cerns ...
 
1. CON: "addresses are horribly long!" (-hasado)
PRO: Shorter domains are available, like xoxy.net (see their FAQ for more)
PRO: you can use your own domain (see their FAQ, anyone tried this?)

Tip: What I do to get around typing long addresses on my own machine is use the autocomplete feature in the browser. In one email field on any site, I entered this part of my address "user@spamgourmet.com". If you use advanced features like the secret word you may want to enter that too. You have to click submit for this address, then go back to fix it later. After doing this once, the "user@spamgourment.com" will come up every time you start to type "user.." in an email field (if you have autocomplete turned on). Then you only have to add the part before "user".

2. CON: What if you want to reply using your spamgourmet address?
PRO: Reverse forwarding feature

"When you reply the email is forwarded back to the sender through spamgourmet and the sending ("From:") address is replaced by the spamgourmet address the sender knows." (-hasado)

I have never actually used this last feature. Does it totally protect your personal email address?

3. CON: Longevity?
"so much spam might arrive and consume bandwidth that the service wouldn't be able to stay free, or even work at all. For this to be avoided the way the blocking works should be changed to blocking BEFORE the body of the email is received."(-hasado)

PRO: Open-source
"Non-commercial service ...costs very little to run...Nobody has money tied up in the service" -spamgourment FAQ

I am not too worried about longevity since the main feature is that the addresses expire. Plus, the code is open source, so anyone with an interest can help change the blocking method if need be or offer another service.

4. CON: "I find the service very confusing too"(-Killer)
I think this is mainly due to their poor interface and design of the site.
PRO: It is actually very easy once you read the site carefully once. Method is simple -- the addresses expire automatically.
PRO: You seldom (or never) have to go back to the site.
PRO: No worries about latest filters and changes in spam methods, etc.

flinchlock 9 Jun 2003 09:22 PM

reverse forwarding... not really!
 
Quote:

Originally posted by hadaso
Another important feature is reverse forwarding: not only does spamgourmet get your mail and forwards it to your email account as any forwarding service. When you reply the email is forwarded back to the sender through spamgourmet and the sending ("From:") address is replaced by the spamgourmet address the sender knows. (Other services also offer reverse forwarding. sneakemail.com is one).
I have an account at f2o.org, and when I have reply address masking enabled at spamgourmet, these two headers are in the Email:

X-Authentication-Warning: home.f2o.org: nobody set sender to myrealusernameATf2o.org using -f
(SquirrelMail authenticated user myrealusername)

My real username is in the Email twice!

:mad: So, looks like reverse forwarding actually gives the FALSE impression that the address is totally suppressed!!

UPDATE

:eek: OOPS... sorry, it is really a sendmail message at the f2o.org site. Back to my search to find a site that allows MANY (2-10) "From" addresses.

anj 10 Nov 2004 09:12 AM

even simpler now!
 
My favorite no-hassle anti-spam tool has gotten even easier!

They have added a user setting to choose how long each address lives for by default, so it is not necessary to specify it in the email address itself. I set mine to 11, so I will only receive the first 11 emails sent to somewebsite.myusername@spamgourmet.com. If after 11 emails, I want to keep receiving mails from SomeWebsite I can whitelist them manually. Otherwise the spam stops coming automatically (as it always has).

They posted this update back in August but I just noticed it now.
"2004-08-03: We added a new feature that allows you to set the default number for your account (this is the number that's used when spamgourmet can't figure out what you meant when it sees a new disposable address). You can set the number in advanced mode. It's currently set to 3 for you, unless you've changed it. So, you can make up addresses without using a number at all, for instance, someword.user@spamgourmet.com or saddlesore~spamcowboy@xoxy.net, and the system will use the default number as the number of messages. Note that this much has been true for awhile -- it's just that the number was always 3. Now, you can change it to any number from 1 to 20."

fmnewbee 10 Nov 2004 07:30 PM

Instead of a number you use first letter
 
like

Adam or Allan or Alex or Albert or Anna or Andres are all 1

Bert or Bob or Ben or Beth or Becky all are 2

Celia etc is three

Don is four

Eberhart is 5 and soo on.

Words over 20 are still twenty.

so spamgourmet is the best one of all DEA ?

Trew

anj 11 Nov 2004 02:39 AM

Re: Instead of a number you use first letter
 
Quote:

Originally posted by fmnewbee
like
Adam or Allan or Alex or Albert or Anna or Andres are all 1

This is true. Always has been. It's a nice feature, yep? I still think Spamgourmet is the best.

Not sure if you just posted this for people's info or if you don't understand the new feature. The new feature is that you don't have to put any number or word. You can specify the default number of messages for all address in the user-interface at spamgourmet.com. Then you can use an address like:
amazon.username@spamgourmet.com
instead of
amazon.10.username@spamgourmet.com
OR
amazon.junk.username@spamgourmet.com

Basically, no need to specify how many messages. You can set a default by logging into your account. So if you make the default 10, all new addresses will allow 10 messages unless otherwise specified in the address.

fmnewbee 30 Nov 2004 03:18 AM

thanks,
 
yes, I wanted to show how it could be used.

here is one example from their forum.

somone dot to dot username at xoxy dot net so the word spam not confuse the person refered to as someone.

But the con is that you only have 20 times for that username.

they have allowed now to have more easy addresses like

somone dot username at xoxy dot net cause some email agents or mailservices don't accept two dots, first the yallowed a ~tilde~ instead of the dots but it looks kind of unsual. The better approach is to have familar addresses.

The better service would be one that also could be a permanent free forwarder?

to trusted persons one could set them to always be able to send to that address. A kidn of whitelist.

Or am I confusing it only? Maybe one should not expect SG to be such a service?

I take up this here cause one need a kind of permanent forwarder that is reliable and not spammable.

wish I understood ths better.

trew

thanks to
Magic Speller

Magic Speller 30 Nov 2004 04:05 AM

Re: thanks,
 
Quote:

Originally posted by fmnewbee
The better service would be one that also could be a permanent free forwarder?

to trusted persons one could set them to always be able to send to that address. A kidn of whitelist.

You can do that with SpamGourmet.

I use two DEA services (along with multiple aliases): Spamex and SpamGourmet. Spamex is a paid service, but well worth it.

I use SpamGourmet mostly for temporary addresses when I need to create an address "on the fly" (if I'm away from my computer, for example). If I'm at my computer and have a few seconds (and expect to receive more than 26 messages), I log into Spamex and create a permanent DEA.

Works well for me.

anj 30 Nov 2004 05:38 AM

As Magic Speller said, you can whitelist certain senders for spamgourmet. The way this works is you whitelist all mail from a given domain. There are few ways you can do this.

1. First is to whitelist all mail from a given domain, no matter what address it was sent to. To do this, you must log on to Spamgourmet and from the Advanced page "add trusted sender".

Other option is to "add trusted sender" for one address only. This can be done in two ways.

2. Also from the web interface, advanced page, click search to see a list of all addresses. Then click on the address you want to add a trusted sender for. Then type in the domain you want to trust, and click "add trusted sender for this address"

3. You can also do this without logging in, when you create the address. When you create the address you can type:
someone.domain.username@ spamgourmet.com
or
someone.*.username@ spamgourmet.com

This will whitelist mail from the first domain to send mail to that address. The disadvantage is it will only allow mail from that domain. It will set the counter to zero and not allow mail from other domains. This can be a problem if a company uses more than one domain, or a secondary service for automation, etc.

P.s. Are you aware that you can add to the life of any address by logging in? Again from the advanced interface, you just click search to view all addresses you have used. Then click on the address you want to extend. Type how many messages you want to renew it for and submit.

fmnewbee 30 Nov 2004 05:52 AM

Thanks for this info
 
So as long as one's friend send too often one manage to prolong the life of such an DEA addy then. That is good to know.

trew


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