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[benn600]

Then you need the all new [insert favorite product here]!!!

Okay.  I want to solve this once and for all.  I have had several email addresses over the years that included a subdomain (free personal domain) such as .no-ip.org.  Well, just a couple years ago I finally bought a good domain that works well for everyone I manage email for.  Unfortunately, spam got through on occasion -- with NO spam filtering whatsoever.  Starting just a few days ago it skyrocketed.  Now the frequency varies greatly but it seems to be getting worse overall, which makes sense.

So I have a new domain that will work great, too.  If not for one very big problem, it would be elegant and flawless.  So let's call my domain mydomain.com.  If I use ben@mydomain.com then I will likely have this problem again as soon as the address leaks for whatever reason.  Then I have heard about plus addressing, where you add a character and then anything you'd like, such as ben#amazon@mydomain.com.  This isn't great because you have to deal with the number sign (or whatever you choose).

So I had a new idea.  It is very similar but uniquely different.  Just use your address as a catch-all!  Then, you'd give each person an interesting address: bobsmith@mydomain.com!  Imagine giving your friend that!  What's up with that?  Of course you'd have amazon@mydomain.com.

So both methods are almost identical.  The reason a catch all would work is because the domain I want to use can be dedicated to me easily.  The moment you start getting spam on an address, you just block that address!  You also know where the address was harvested (theoretically).  Of course some bots may send random stuff but this isn't a problem with any of my catch alls right now--for the most part.  Perhaps the typical names: admin, webmaster, etc. could be problematic...so just block them right away!  I don't anticipate heavy blocking.  It took about a year to get a single spam message to my current address.

So on to the MAJOR problem.  REPLYING!  When someone emails me, say friend1@mydomain.com.  When I respond, what address is it from?  This gets complicated because if you revert to a single address, ben@mydomain.com, then you're opening up a single point of failure again.  Plus, people will think you changed your address.

Maybe a person's address should be their-address@mydomain.com?  So on sending a message, the from would be rewritten to be from who it is to??  Oh this gets very complicated.

Whoever followed along and has some comments: congratulations to you!  Go rate your favorite song in MC!

[zxsix]

I run my own mail server and create an alias address for each site where I shop or have to provide contact info.
This way I know who sold my email address.  I can call them and tell them why they lost my business and then delete the alias.

In Outlook, there is an option to display the FROM field above the TO and BCC fields.
Just remember to type the alias in there (or copy/paste it) before you click send.

[benn600]

Interesting.  That was always the confusion: when you reply to a message it should be from who they are supposed to email you to.

Funny thing.  I removed an old alias and disabled my spam filtering again and again I'm back to essentially 0 spam.  I find that it goes in huge waves for me.  So I canceled my major project of changing my address at the last minute.  My biggest problem now is: what is a good way to archive email?  I have thousands of messages and just want to archive it.  I have folders from ancient (things I want to forget) projects, etc., but don't want to just delete the stuff.  Is there some nice one-file wrapper, zip maybe, and then a way to easily view those messages later?  I'm tempted to just put it in a single folder on my IMAP server but the problem is that Mac Mail downloads all folders to store locally by default.  It's annoying having to save hundreds of megabytes on every computer.  Thunderbird doesn't do this by default.

[zxsix]

Interesting.  That was always the confusion: when you reply to a message it should be from who they are supposed to email you to.

Funny thing.  I removed an old alias and disabled my spam filtering again and again I'm back to essentially 0 spam.  I find that it goes in huge waves for me.  So I canceled my major project of changing my address at the last minute.  My biggest problem now is: what is a good way to archive email?  I have thousands of messages and just want to archive it.  I have folders from ancient (things I want to forget) projects, etc., but don't want to just delete the stuff.  Is there some nice one-file wrapper, zip maybe, and then a way to easily view those messages later?  I'm tempted to just put it in a single folder on my IMAP server but the problem is that Mac Mail downloads all folders to store locally by default.  It's annoying having to save hundreds of megabytes on every computer.  Thunderbird doesn't do this by default.

Outlook has an archive feature that stores them in a separate file and removes them from inbox area.