The unlimited number '.+.' option

[rah1rah]

Hi,

Have I misunderstood this usage? If I give my spamgourmet username to anybody in a sg new email, then they know my username. If that's true, they can - if I don't use prefix words or watchwords - send me xxxx.+.rah1rah@spamgourmet.com and forever and exclusively send spam to me (or at least until I manually block them)?

If this is the case, wouldn't it be good to be able to permanently disable this feature for any given account?

Sorry if I've misunderstood this - new user.

Thanks for spamgourmet, and for making the code GPL'd.

Cheers,

===R

[josh]

What you're saying is technically true, but we've never seen a problem with it in the 4 years we've been operating. The main thing is that it's probably too much work for a spammer (which is key) -- further, the + directive establishes an exclusive sender based on the sender of the initial email. Spammers generally can't send from the same address more than once -- either it's a "joe job" -- that is, someone else's address that has nothing to do with the spam, or a temporary yahoo or hotmail account that will be shut down.

[rah1rah]

Spammers generally can't send from the same address more than once -- either it's a "joe job" -- that is, someone else's address that has nothing to do with the spam, or a temporary yahoo or hotmail account that will be shut down.

I was thinking of how somebody could abuse the system, esp, say, real people - rather than bots or address harvesters - with whom you might want to exchange only a few emails. You might say something contentious on a board/blog/etc then be flamed by real people.

I guess I've somewhat missed the point of where it is and isn't useful to use an sg address.

Thank, josh, for the answer, anyway!

Cheers,

===R

[josh]

yes -- it's really a spam fighting tool, not an anonymizer. Note that you *can* use the watchword feature (or prefix) to achieve what you're talking about though.