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Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

zdnet.com

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Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#111

Post by mkskm »

kop316 wrote: post #38
metaphor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why couldn't spammers just: s/(\w+)@(\w+)\.(fastmail\.fm)/\2@\3/g ...or equivalent?

In that instance you can. What is also nice though is if you have a custom domain, you can set the custom domain to do the same thing AND have an alias. So for me, I have a few emails in my custom domain: {firstname}@example.com market@example.com (there's others, but it's not relavent to this discussion). market@example.com just goes straight to spam, as I don't use that email for anything. foo@market.example.com is…

It looks like you can accomplish this directly with Fastmail as well using aliases, e.g. foo@marketalias.fastmail.com (or one of their pseudonyms).

Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#112

Post by chrismorgan »

pi-err wrote: post #66
inanutshellus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Periods are ignored in gmail and anything after a + is also ignored, so all of these will go to the same mailbox: johndoe@gmail.com john.doe@gmail.com j.o.h.n.d.o.e@gmail.com johndoe+spam@gmail.com john....doe+spam@gmail.com but johndoe.spam@gmail.com wouldn't go to the same mailbox.

john...doe@gmail.com doesn’t seem to work though. I don’t think Gmail takes multiple dots.

Not just Gmail, that’s a syntactically invalid email address. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Local-part for details.

But sure, you could have `(my name is)john."..".doe+spam(...)@gmail.com` if you wanted to. Syntactically valid! The parenthesised bits would be stripped out before sending, and I have no idea whether Gmail would be willing to accept the quoted dots bit.

Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#113

Post by chrismorgan »

throw0101a wrote: post #10

Finally. This has only been allowed since RFC 822 (1982). Is there any reason why Microsoft did not support this from the beginning (of Exchange)?

No it hasn’t. RFC 822 essentially says “local-part is whatever you want it to be” and defines no semantics. Certainly it doesn’t say “you can put a plus on and anything after that will go to the same mailbox”. That’s a far more modern notion, and one that is far from ubiquitous. Rather, it says things like this:

> The local-part of an addr-spec in a mailbox specification (i.e., the host's name for the mailbox) is understood to be whatever the receiving mail protocol server allows. For example, some systems do not understand mailbox references of the form "P. D. Q. Bach", but others do.

Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#114

Post by Shorn »

snorremd wrote: post #14
ahalam wrote: post #5

FastMail had some of the cleverest ideas for plus addressing. username+tag@fastmail.fm could be given away as tag@username.fastmail.fm

I used this for a few sites, but then stopped as I realized this would be a pain to change if I ever wanted to change to a different email provider. Wish every provider would support this as I’m sure spammers have caught on to the plus addressing scheme.

I run a paid service called Kopi (https://kopi.cloud) that is meant to deal with exactly this issue.

You can use a shared domain:`hackernews@snorremd.kopi.cloud` Or, after setting up an MX and a TXT DNS record, you can use your own domain: `hackernews@mail.snorremd.com`.

You can change the "real address" of any "forwarder" (`snorremd.kopi.cloud`/`mail.snorremd.com`) to relay to any address you want, whenever you want.

You can block individual addresses like `hackernews@mail.snorremd.com` with two clicks starting from your mail client.

You can also configure individual addresses to redirect to RSS so you can read newsletters or other "chatty" services as part of your normal browsing habits.

Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#115

Post by tedd-the-tiger »

gruez wrote: post #34
tedd-the-tiger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long held the thought of having a mailbox that receives [everything]@[domain], except certain blacklisted addresses. As certain addresses get spam and/or I lose interest in the business I gave the address to, I add them to the blacklist. So far, I'm using AWS SES, which seems to be focused on the sending of marketing emails, and are not fussed on receiving, but includes rudimentary blacklisting. So far, it's zer…

How is it set up with SES? AFAIK they don't provide a POP/IMAP interface.

SES has rule sets for receiving email. I have one rule that matches all the blocked recipients (addresses at my domain that receive spam), which bounces with 'mailbox does not exist' (then stops rule processing), then another rule after that that puts all mail into an S3 bucket.

Then I have a script that uses the AWS CLI to move all the mail from the bucket to a local dovecot server.

The whole thing is really hacky/experimental at the moment, and I haven't given out any addresses, so all that I receive is spam. But the spam I do receive is very little and quickly adds to the blocked recipients list.

Sending using SES uses the built-in SMTP server functionality at AWS and has very generous limits for one who is not marketing.

Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#116

Post by tedd-the-tiger »

Xylakant wrote: post #74
gruez wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it set up with SES? AFAIK they don't provide a POP/IMAP interface.

I presume the parent means Amazon work mail which AFAIR uses SES to send. Last time I evaluated email services, they didn’t handle catch-all which made that a non-starter for us.

Oh no, not WorkMail. That costs ~US$4/user/month, which is not what I want at all. Check my response to your parent post.

Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#117

Post by glial »

jph00 wrote: post #87
ahalam wrote: post #5

FastMail had some of the cleverest ideas for plus addressing. username+tag@fastmail.fm could be given away as tag@username.fastmail.fm

I wrote that! I'm glad you like it. :) It's been nearly 20 years since I added that feature. I assumed at the time everyone would do it when they saw how handy it is. For some reason that didn't happen...

Just heard about it today, and just started using it today! Any other cool tricks I should know about?

Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#118

Post by isoprophlex »

thekyle wrote: post #107
noja wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you use shopname@? Once you know the pattern everyone can guess it.

Not OP, but I'm guessing because it's easier to remember than completely random email address (password manager might solve this?) and more unique than using the same email everywhere.

Yeah, thats exactly it, it allows filtering incoming messages into folders based on what I tell a shop and it makes it easier to remember what alias i used where

Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#119

Post by isoprophlex »

fisherjeff wrote: post #79
isoprophlex wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use shopname@firstname.lastname.email, with my own lastname.email domain. Fastmail makes configuring your dns records for this super simple. It's always fun interacting with customer service reps when they for example confirm my email address... "errrrrr yeah so we email you at ourname@...?"

Wow I have the exact same setup – it works perfectly! I assume you also, like me, have a backup domain like lastname-email.com for all the broken email validators out there?

Yeah just the base firstnamelastname@fastmail.com i got when first registering with fastmail.

I use this one for two or three vital services, like banking and receiving government messages.

Meaning i have some backup should i forget to renew the .email domain...

Re: Microsoft adding support for custom '+' email addresses in Office 365

#120

Post by D-Coder »

ahalam wrote: post #5

FastMail had some of the cleverest ideas for plus addressing. username+tag@fastmail.fm could be given away as tag@username.fastmail.fm

Panix.com has a similar feature. If you are dcoder@panix.com, you can use @dcoder.users.panix.com, which avoids the problem of places that don't understand "+". I usually use companyname@dcoder.users.panix.com for each company I deal with. (Note, I am not actually "dcoder".)

It's a little longer to read over the phone, but I've never had trouble with it. And I've been able to tell a couple of companies that their email databases had been hacked or stolen.

Disclaimer: just a satisfied customer.

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