by josh » Mon Feb 16, 2004 9:52 pm
Bob,
What's probably going on is that you didn't previously have "reply address masking" enabled for your account -- using the "send the first message" feature automatically enables the feature if you don't already have it enabled.
The reason for the fancy addresses is to redirect your messages through spamgourmet so that your disposable email address can take the place of your real sender address. That is, without "reply address masking" (before you used the feature), a dialog would have looked like this:
1. sender sends message: sender ---> spamgourmet.com ---> you
2. you reply: you ---> sender (who can see your real email address by looking at the "from" field, unless you changed it yourself)
with "reply address masking", it goes like this:
1. sender sends message: sender ---> spamgourmet.com ---> you
2. you reply: you ---> spamgourmet.com ---> sender (who can't see your real email address, because it has been replaced with a disposable address in the From: field)
using the "send the first message" feature basically lets you send through spamgourmet without having to reply. If you didn't have the "reply address masking feature enabled, it would go like this:
1. you send first message: you ---> spamgourmet.com ---> sender
2. sender replies: sender ---> spamgourmet.com ---> you
3. you reply: you ---> sender (who can see your real email address)
hope this makes sense...