Feature Request: Forwarder options
UTG
suggestion. Thanks.
Right now, a forwarder can only forward the email on or bounce it back.
It would be nice to have a few additional options: discard, respond,
and challenge. When the *Discard option is used, instead of forwarding
on emails sent to it, they would instead be trashed. This would be
useful for accounts that you do not want to receive email from all the
time, but only during certain times. While you could instead turn on
the *Bounce option when you do not wish to receive emails, some
services may consider bounced emails to be an indication that you are
no longer active and may delete your account as a result. If the emails
were instead discarded, this would be prevented.
When the *Response option is used, a custom email from the user would
be sent back to the original sender. This email could contain several
different messages, such as instructions on how to reach the user
directly. An example message might be:
Hi, this email account is no longer active. To contact me temporarily,
send an email to foobar-AT-username.e4ward.com and then I will create
an email just for you to reach me at. Thanks!
If the "foobar" address started receiving spam, the user would simply
create a new temporary forwarder and update the *Response message with
the new address, then delete the "foobar" forwarder and receive no more
spam.
When the *Challenge option is used, a reply will be sent back to the
sender containing two things: a webpage address and a randomly
generated identification number that is tied to the e4ward user's
primary address. This identification number would expire after a few
weeks or so. The sender would go to the webpage (
www.e4ward.com/challenge ) where they would enter the identification
number they received in the email, and some additional information such
as a word or series of numbers in a picture image (to fool scripts). If
both entries were correct, the sender would be permitted to send a
brief message (no attachments) to the user via a FORM of some kind on
the e4ward website. This form would send the message on to the user's
primary email address, which would give the sender the chance to
identify themself and request a valid email address be created for them
by the user. The sender communicates to the user, yet none of the
user's real email addresses or even email forwarders become compromised.