On Thu, Sep 28, 2006 at 03:42:55PM -0700, Joe Emenaker wrote: > > I was wondering if anyone has implemented something like the following: > > Supposed I have an email address: bill@domain.com > > I want to be able to append something arbitrary to the end of the > username, like so... > > bill-1@domain.com > bill-2@domain.com > bill-newyorktimes@domain.com > etc. > > and have them treated in this particular way: > > Each of these addresses would deliver to bill@domain.com's real mailbox > the FIRST time they were ever seen, and then for some fixed number of > messages and/or time limit after that. For example, the first five could > get through, or any that arrive within 2 days of the first one, etc. All > messages to that address after that would get tossed in some other > folder or deleted outright. *Additionally*, it would be nice to maintain > a count of the messages that have arrived for each address. > > The purpose is probably obvious. I want throw-away addresses to use for > registering at websites. I know Mailinator does this, but I don't want > to go fetch them like that... and I *also* would love to have some > metrics of how much extra mail I get from various websites. For example, > if I register at youtube with bill-youtube@domain.com, and I later > discover that a few hundred messages have come in for that address, > well... then we'd know that they sell their addresses to lots of people. > I'm not sure what *good* that information does me, but it would be nice > to know. > > And it doesn't have to be a hyphen for the separator, but I know that a > couple of the popular MTA's use the hyphen for purposes similar to > this... so it might be the path of least resistance. > > Anybody implemented something like that? > > - Joe I have not implemented such a thing. However, if you were using virtual users with a PostgreSQL backed (I am certain the psql would work, not sure about mysql but I would imagine so), you could use a trigger on SELECT. If you have a some sort of counter or flag in the DB, the trigger function could examine it and decide whether to return the actual email address to which the mail should go, something bogus, or change it or whatever. Use your imagination. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com
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