spamgourmet - free auto-creating email addresses, strong spam blocker, short learning curve

gourmet "spam block o-riffic!"

8,596 days, 323,720 user accounts
9,038,952 spamgourmet addresses
172,801,137 msgs delivered, 5,836 today
1,251,358,007 msgs eaten, 9,000 today

spam-proof your inbox!

IMPORTANT!
As of 2023, Protonmail requires full DANE compliance from spamgourmet. This issue is at our attention and are working with our current DNS provider to provide what we need to make this happen.

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advanced mode
better protection
a little maintenance
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You have 0 trusted sender(s) You have 0 watchword(s)
watchword enforcement: enabled disabled
reply address masking: enabled disabled
eaten message log: enabled disabled
don't log for hidden addresses: enabled disabled
hide subject tagline: enabled disabled
hide tagline for trusted/exclusive only: enabled disabled

default number

Advanced mode is just like no-brainer mode, except that you can also specify trusted senders, watchwords, and a prefix. You can also turn on and off reply address masking, and view/edit your spamgourmet addresses. If you have trusted senders, watchwords, or a prefix, you'll see this screen by default when you log in.

Trusted Senders: You can add and remove 'trusted senders' here by specifying either a domain or an email address. Trusted senders will be allowed to send you email on any of your spamgourmet addresses, without advancing the message count.

This way, you can sign up for a list that you don't trust using a spamgourmet address. Then, if you like the list, you can come back here and add the email address of the list as a trusted sender. If you add a domain, any user at that domain will be trusted. If you add an email address, only that address will be trusted.

Watchwords: Watchwords help you control the creation of spamgourmet addresses. If you have watchword enforcement turned on and at least one watchword, then the system will not create a new address unless one of your watchwords is included in the "word" of the address. For example, if your username was 'spamcowboy', and your watchword list includes 'saddle' and 'rope', then these forms will work to create new addresses:

saddlesoap.3.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com
GitARope.2.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com
backinthesaddleagain.6.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com

and these will not:

coyote.20.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com
eternalspamnation.*.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com

It's key for you to come back to the website and change the watchword(s) every now and then -- one example of "a little maintenance" -- this is to prevent someone from just adding something on to an existing address to create a new one.

Reply Address Masking: With reply address masking enabled, the system modifies each forwarded message so that, if you reply, your reply will return to spamgourmet instead of going straight to the sender. The system will then substitute the particular spamgourmet address that was originally used by the sender for your real return address in order to hide your real return address.

Search Addresses: You can view a big table with all your spamgourmet addresses by clicking the button that says "search addresses". If you do not enter any search terms, all your addresses will be displayed.

To sort the spamgourmet adress table, click on the column headers.

On the table, you click on an address (by its 'word') and edit it to:
a) change the number of remaining messages, and
b) if you like, specify an 'exclusive sender' for the address. You can read more about exclusive senders in the FAQ -- it's pretty much like having a trusted sender for a particular address.

Or, if you like, you can get the whole list in XML by clicking here.

Prefix: If you're really paranoid, you can specify a 'prefix' that will be required on every new spamgourmet address from an untrusted sender. Think of it as a password for creating new spamgourmet addresses that you can change from time to time. By the way, the prefix does pretty much the same thing as watchwords (keeps people from creating new spamgourmet addresses against your will), and generally, watchwords are a better choice. Read on if you like...

your prefix:

If you specify a prefix, the system will not create a new spamgourmet address without it. This will protect you if you believe someone other than you is making up new addresses with your username. The format of a prefixed spamgourmet email address is:

prefix.someword.x.user@spamgourmet.com

So, if your prefix is 'cowpoke', you would specify a spamgourmet address like so:

cowpoke.spamelope.2.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com

And if you later change your prefix to 'coyote', the prefix 'cowpoke' will no longer work to create new addresses, but exisiting addresses will continue to function. If you delete your prefix, spamgourmet addresses may be created with or without prefixes.

Default Number: Set this to be the number of messages you want to use for a new spamgourmet address when spamgourmet can't figure out what you intended from looking at the address itself (for instance, if you left the number out). Note that some things you put in place of the number will have other effects -- read the FAQ (painful as that task may be) for details.

Eaten Message Log: If this feature is enabled, the system will keep track of the last three messages that were eaten and show you information about them (who they were from, when they came in, and which address they were addressed to). You can enable the option to not log for hidden addresses if you want the system to ignore addresses that you've designated as hidden. This can all be useful, but if you don't think you'll use it, please don't enable it, because it makes the system work harder. For the same reason, we found that we really can't keep track of more than three eaten messages.

Hiding the Subject Tagline: If you don't like the extra text that spamgourmet adds to the subject of your messages (e.g., informing you of the number of remaining messages, or the trusted status of the sender), enable the feature that says "hide subject tagline" -- the same information will then be put into a header of the message which you may or may not be able to view with your email client software.

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