Apple Describes Disposable Email Solution to Combat Spam in New Patent Application

[haravikk]

In any case, I already have the perfect spam solution similar to what Apple is doing here. All it takes is to purchase your own domain name and use the catchall email feature with forwarding to your real email address.

I'm doing exactly this as well, but I think it's a good idea for companies like Apple to make such a feature accessible to end users. Many users just make do with their ISP provided address, or services such as gmail or hotmail etc., so giving them support for this kind of feature would be a great way to reduce spam.

It should however be taken a step further with some kind of interaction with the server and your mail client. For example, by adding a special header your mail client can know if your server supports this feature, thus if I were to suddenly receive an e-mail to walmart@mydomain.com then if I mark it as junk in Mail, instead of handling it locally Mail could optionally tell my server never to accept mail from that address ever again. Obviously it needs some means of cancelling that as well, but it could be a good thing to do.

Like I say, I'm using a catch-all address, but my provider also supports garbage addresses that just immediately delete messages, so I can set such an address for anything that looks like an attempt to guess a valid address. For example admin@mydomain.com seems to be quite a popular one as historically a lot of sites had this.

 

[groovyd]

huh

How do you not get that "doing this" is not what's being patented? It's a combination of automating it and making it user friendly that matters, and neither you nor anyone else on this forum has ever done it, so you have no prior art.

What are you talking about? I have done this and it is automatic and user friendly. I have been doing this for over 13 years and even recommending the approach to others along the way.

 

[John.B]

The Mavericks mail client is a mess. It doesn't work right with gmail or exchange.

Gmail's abomination of an IMAP implementation is a mess.

Why doesn't people just use Gmail and be done...

See above.

 

[SecretAsianMan]

We have been doing pretty much everything described in the application at Spamex (http://www.spamex.com) since 2000. Easy creation of Disposable Email Addresses, bi-directional communication, personal domains... nothing terribly novel here Apple.

Looks interesting. Checking out your FAQ now.

 

[RMXO]

I was hoping you can have emails that self-destruct like Mission Impossible style but that's just me.

 

[cwt1nospam]

What are you talking about? I have done this and it is automatic and user friendly. I have been doing this for over 13 years and even recommending the approach to others along the way.

No, you have not done this. Maybe you've done it for yourself and a few others. When you've done it for tens of millions of people then you'll have something. Until then you're just sharing a neat trick with some of your friends. Not the same thing at all.

 

[llemtt]

No, you have not done this. Maybe you've done it for yourself and a few others. When you've done it for tens of millions of people then you'll have something. Until then you're just sharing a neat trick with some of your friends. Not the same thing at all.

I've done that trick in the last 14 years too... I don't think a patent should be granted if based on common knowledge!

I already used it to prosecute websites that "sold" my address and some that had them stolen too.

That kind of service has been already available from email providers that lets domain owners add any alias to thei main account and then eventually put it in a "black list".

The only interesting idea is to provide a simple way to add aliases when you don't own your domain!

BTW my mail at macrumors has always been macrumors.com@m-elli.it

Cheers

 

[groovyd]

whaaa?

No, you have not done this. Maybe you've done it for yourself and a few others. When you've done it for tens of millions of people then you'll have something. Until then you're just sharing a neat trick with some of your friends. Not the same thing at all.

are you saying unless i push an idea to a mass market it isn't considered prior art? haha, sure glad you don't work for the patent office

 

[Oracle1729]

No, you absolutely have not been doing this. "This" is making it easy for the average user who knows nothing about spoofing addresses or adding accounts to their own domain. Have you done that? NO. "This" is about automating the process so that a user can click a button to remove/block email from arriving if sent to that address. Have you done that? Again, NO.

Forget spoofing, I'm talking about adding accounts to my own domain. And my hosting companies have made this brain-dead easy for the average users since I've been doing it. So maybe I haven't "done that", but then I've been using someone else's version of "that" for 12 years. So most certainly it is prior art.

 

[cwt1nospam]

Forget spoofing, I'm talking about adding accounts to my own domain. And my hosting companies have made this brain-dead easy for the average users since I've been doing it. So maybe I haven't "done that", but then I've been using someone else's version of "that" for 12 years. So most certainly it is prior art.

You're looking at one tiny piece of art and saying that you've got a prior art. By that reasoning, any painting done today is derivative of all prior paintings because it uses pigmented paint.

are you saying unless i push an idea to a mass market it isn't considered prior art? haha, sure glad you don't work for the patent office

I'm saying that what makes this patentable (assuming it is) would be the mass marketing of a method that allows all the users on one domain to do this trick easily. That's unique and very powerful. I see no one claiming to have done this.

BTW my mail at macrumors has always been macrumors.com@m-elli.it

You'd have a point if your mail at macrumors was macrumors.com@somedomain.com and my address could be thisisnew@somedomain.com and we could both easily dispose of those two addresses without affecting our real_address@somedomain.com, but since you can't do that, you haven't done this.

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Forget spoofing, I'm talking about adding accounts to my own domain. And my hosting companies have made this brain-dead easy for the average users since I've been doing it. So maybe I haven't "done that", but then I've been using someone else's version of "that" for 12 years. So most certainly it is prior art.

I know that you're talking about adding it to your own domain, that's why I'm saying it's not prior art. Doing it to your own domain requires that you have your own domain! The average user is NOT going to do that. Ever. In fact, they're not going to be aware that they could do that.

The real trick is doing it for all the users on the same domain without making them aware of the technical details Anything that forces them to know these details is not prior art.