Allow reload through an email

[Guest]

We all know that to enable more messages on an address, go to the advanced mode and enter a new quantity. But I was thinking it would be nice if I could do it by just sending an email to that address.

To prevent anyone from restocking the address, there would probably need to be a secret word setup on the account. Like if my word was 'oranges', maybe I could send a mail to the address with a subject of:

To: usenet.20.joeblow@xoxy.net
Subject: RESTOCK 20 oranges

And as long as I'm thinking here, it would be good if spamgourmet would send a note to the forwarded address confirming that the new message quantity had been set.

[SysKoll]

Thanks for your input.

To prevent anyone from restocking the address, there would probably need to be a secret word setup on the account. Like if my word was 'oranges', maybe I could send a mail to the address with a subject of:

To: usenet.20.joeblow@xoxy.net
Subject: RESTOCK 20 oranges

Then, instead of having to remember the password to the web site, you'd have to remember the passwords for restocking AND the web site. That's adding complexity for the user.

I am not saying it's a bad idea, I just want to know what the benefits are. Please elaborate. Why would you want to do this rather than the current method?

[Guest]

The real benefit would be convience. There would also be a minor benefit of being able to restock an address if I only had email access and not web access.

I didn't mean that each address would have a unique keyword. I was thinking that your whole account would have a single keyword. Sort of like the current prefix. So in my example, I would use the keyword 'oranges' to restock any of my addresses.

It's not that there's anything wrong with the current way. It would just be more convenient to be able to pop off an email. I could send a restocking email in about 2 seconds to re-enable the address. But with the current way, I have to login to spamgourmet, go to advanced, find the address, update the number, and hit submit. Obviously it's not too difficult to do it that way, but I think if the email way was enabled, I would use that all the time.

Thanks for the consideration.

[bheckel]

I agree that it would be useful to email reload without having to navigate the sg website (although the new "remember me" checkbox minimizes the trouble). It would also reduce traffic to the sg site (not sure if that matters to sg).

I often worry about using an sg address that I've maxed out in the past but have since forgotten about. I end up creating unique named temp addresses that could be avoided.

[SysKoll]

I hope the Guest here is not the same person as you, BHeckel.

I'm going to set up a poll with that idea. Implementing it would be a lot of work because this is a new DB field, a new web interface (to set the refill password) and a set of new messages and templates to translate. So we'd like to see if many people are interested.

Check out the poll section.

[kyricc]

I'm going to set up a poll with that idea. Implementing it would be a lot of work because this is a new DB field, a new web interface (to set the refill password) and a set of new messages and templates to translate. So we'd like to see if many people are interested.

Not sure if this would lessen the work required but how about only allowing it from your real email addy that is already registered with SG? I think the idea is great BTW.

-jb

[SysKoll]

See my reply in the poll.

[Guest]

I had put this in the Polls thread for this feature, but I'm not sure that everyone reads there.

I was thinking that it might be worthwhile to enable more control over accounts through email interaction. So not only could you reload an email, but you could do many other things like:

- Shutdown an address:
Subject: SGREFILL 0 keyword

- Add trusted sender:
Subject: SGADDTRUSTED amazon.com keyword

- Remove trusted sender:
Subject: SGRMTRUSTED amazon.com keyword

- Get status of an address:
Subject: SGSTATUS keyword

- Have spamgourmet send you an email with a munged address so you can send an initial email:
Subject: SGMUNGE keyword

I think it would be more convient a lot of times do manage the account through these types of commands.

[ben]

It would be better to have it set up as commands in the body text and that way you could handle multiple addresses at once. Something like:
reload 20 address1
create 20 address2
etc.

Controling things via email can be convenient because then you could handle multiple things in a shot. Also, there are occasions where email access is easier (and cheaper) to come by than web access (like at a hotel's business center).

regards,
Ben

[Guest]

What would be ultra-convenient would be if we could refill by replying to an email through SG, but having it processed as a command as part of the address masking phase.

So say if I receive an email to my "oranges" address, and it's SG-munged subject line tells me I have 0 or 1 or whatever messages remaining, I want to be able to hit REPLY, change subject line to "SGREFILL 20" and hit SEND. When it reaches SG, then it can be identified as a command, processed, and NOT forwarded onto the original sender.

[Guest]

It would be better to have it set up as commands in the body text and that way you could handle multiple addresses at once. Something like:
reload 20 address1
create 20 address2
etc.

This would be a good way to list multiple commands, but I think it would be better that all the commands affected the address in the To: field. If you could list different addresses in the body of the message, what address would you use to send the email to?