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

[gnasher729]

But I've been able to do this for quite a while now? iCloud already has the feature. Its called aliases.

That would be a manual system and dependent on how hard you try doing it. This patent would make it automatic and invisible. You reply to some website, and this thing generates a completely new address just for that website. You never actually notice it. Just if you tell Mail that you received spam, it tracks it down to that website and remembers that mails sent through that site generate spam.

I suggest that Apple should give a free license for this patent to everybody.

 

[John.B]

This used to work with Yahoo, but their recent webmail overhaul broke it. Not sure why we can't just go to whitelist emails. I guess there are too many vested interests when it comes to spam to get the problem addressed in a comprehensive, meaningful way.

That said, I'm not sure what would be unique enough about this to warrant a patent...

 

[Parasprite]

Sounds like a convoluted solution...

The exact convoluted solution I have been looking for, that is!

 

[sentiblue]

Copycat!!!

I'm using my personal email on GoogleApps and have been using this method for years...

The only thing I cannot do is sending out emails with the temporary alias as the original sender.

 

[Msail30bay]

Finally!! A system with some smarts behind it, nice! So tried of having to logging into - Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Hushmail and Verizon +……………. yes, I have about 7 email accounts, so what?

 

[roadbloc]

I've been using tempory inboxes for years. They are nothing new.

 

[John.B]

Now if they can just fix the Mail app in Mavericks, we'll be in good shape!

I dumped Gmail and my Mail problems in Mavericks were solved.

IMAP > Gmail.

Just saying'...

 

[Antares]

I think this is a great and original idea! It would be an easy to use implementation of similar but manual steps many people have taken in the past. Building something like this directly into Mail would allow everyone access to these features. Apple could make the process seamless and mostly effortless on the part of users. What a great concept! I can’t wait to see it in Mail.

 

[iBug2]

That would be a manual system and dependent on how hard you try doing it. This patent would make it automatic and invisible. You reply to some website, and this thing generates a completely new address just for that website. You never actually notice it. Just if you tell Mail that you received spam, it tracks it down to that website and remembers that mails sent through that site generate spam.

I suggest that Apple should give a free license for this patent to everybody.

This is amazing, it's one feature of a mail client/service I'd like to have more than anything else.

 

[locust76]

Meh, not impressive.

Spam will always be a problem unless the SMTP protocol is retired, which is a huge deal.

There are a lot of things you can do with SMTP to make it secure. Username/Password authentication, reverse DNS, SPF, and spam blacklists come to mind.

I get hundreds of mails a day on my server, 95% of which gets rejected outright due to SPF and spam blacklist checks, the remaining 4.9% gets filtered via Spamassassin.

The problem is that many mail servers out there don't use things like blacklists and SPF, so they accept anything anyone sends them regardless of where they're coming from or who they say they are.

 

[jtara]

Time for Spamex to cash-in. I've been using their service that does exactly this for many years, and love it.

They almost shut-down a few years ago, I get the idea it's a shoe-string operation that continues to operate just because the owner doesn't want to disappoint their users.

Apple is going to have a problem with prior art on this one, or else is going to have to buy-off those who did this years ago.

 

[locust76]

Apple better have a really unique and innovative solution to warrant a patent on something that even open-source Postfix servers have been doing for years and years.

 

[LanceCottrell]

Massive prior art

Nyms.net
anon.penet.fi
many other remailer based Nyms services

all are clear prior art to all of the claims listed in the patent.

 

[Parasprite]

That would be a manual system and dependent on how hard you try doing it. This patent would make it automatic and invisible. You reply to some website, and this thing generates a completely new address just for that website. You never actually notice it. Just if you tell Mail that you received spam, it tracks it down to that website and remembers that mails sent through that site generate spam.

I suggest that Apple should give a free license for this patent to everybody.

It couldn't be automatic if you were giving it your main address when signing up for an account on a website. You would have to manually copy a disposable one in order for this to work at all, unless iOS/OS X will autofill forms with disposable ones (and assuming they could do it in a way that didn't confuse people).

 

[randian]

Apple is going to have a problem with prior art on this one, or else is going to have to buy-off those who did this years ago.

No, they won't. Not because there isn't prior art, but because any challenge requires litigation, which likely challengers can't afford. A week of Apple's legal budget likely exceeds Spamex's gross annual revenue.

 

[b0nd18t]

Apple's patent knowledge > macrumor troll X's patent knowledge.

 

[garylapointe]

This is just pointless. The effort spent in making up email addresses and then remembering which one for what use, and how many other places you used it, vs. being able to dump it..

But if Apple's authentication system that's now generating passwords for you (and remembering them) would do the same for disposable e-mail addresses (generate and remember) that would be a lot more useful...

Gary

 

[Parasprite]

There are a lot of things you can do with SMTP to make it secure. Username/Password authentication, reverse DNS, SPF, and spam blacklists come to mind.

I get hundreds of mails a day on my server, 95% of which gets rejected outright due to SPF and spam blacklist checks, the remaining 4.9% gets filtered via Spamassassin.

The problem is that many mail servers out there don't use things like blacklists and SPF, so they accept anything anyone sends them regardless of where they're coming from or who they say they are.

I disagree, the biggest problem is the number of corporate/mass email solutions that consider "spoofing outgoing to make it look like it is coming from your main address" to be an acceptable practice... If it wasn't for this, authenticating/blocking the source of spam would be comparatively easy.

I still get emails from "%From_User@hotmail.com" ocassionally... It's bad when even I can tell the programmer obviously missed a % when writing the program...

 

[JonneyGee]

There have been widespread issues with Mail in Mavericks: searching issues, not receiving messages, sorting issues, emails randomly getting deleted, and more. Some of these issues are related to Gmail and others aren't. Personally I have a Gmail account but also my own .com that I use much more, and I've had significant issues with searching and emails showing up 5-10 minutes late (after they're available on my iPad and iPhone). I like Mavericks on the whole, but these issues really need to get ironed out quickly.

The Mail app in Mavericks works great. My guess is you are using that non standard terribly implemented IMAP email service known as Gmail.

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. Then when you sign up somewhere like for instance Walmart's site you just use walmart@mydomainname.com and that way you never give out your email address and instantly know when someone is spamming you and can turn it off whenever.

Been doing this for years.

 

[Tiger8]

There are a lot of things you can do with SMTP to make it secure. Username/Password authentication, reverse DNS, SPF, and spam blacklists come to mind.

I get hundreds of mails a day on my server, 95% of which gets rejected outright due to SPF and spam blacklist checks, the remaining 4.9% gets filtered via Spamassassin.

The problem is that many mail servers out there don't use things like blacklists and SPF, so they accept anything anyone sends them regardless of where they're coming from or who they say they are.

True, I have filters too however they don't work very well as sometimes they tag non-English emails as spam, and that doesn't work for me.

Newer servers use SMTP authentication, but the problem remains with the legacy SMTP servers that don't. I didn't say it's easy, but if the SMTP protocol is retired (i.e. servers stop accepting incoming messages if sent via SMTP) and is replaced with sSMTP or some other standard, then it could dramatically stop it.

 

[nazaar]

wow... this sounds very promising. Looking forward to implementation!

 

[mikebenton]

Catch-all

I've been using my own domain with Google for years. I've always put the name of the company in front of the @ symbol. It makes it easy to create filters/rules later. So for Apple, I gave them apple@mydomain.com.

Google is one of the few services that allow the catch-all mailbox. Microsoft's Outlook mail doesn't allow the catch-all. As a result, you have to add an alias for each address you give out. I don't think anyone wants to do this.

The concern with catch-all mailboxes is spam. I will say that Google does an excellent job of catching spam, regardless of who the e-mail is addressed to.

 

[matatk]

I did some testing of this recently and discovered that iCloud supports the + character in email addresses, so that, in conjunction with the email aliases that iCloud already provides, could be used to spot where spam's coming from and drop one's sacrificial address when it gets too much.

Of course that's still a relatively manual process, but I believe it can be done right now, using just iCloud and its in-built features. Has anyone else tried this? Thought it may be of help.

 

[AngerDanger]

A patent application without a confusing diagram is like a day without sun…

 

[RMo]

Gmail has this functionality built in kind of with custom filters. You can add "+<text>" to your email address and create a filter to work with the <text> portion. Ex. JSmith@gmail.com -> JSmith+macrumors@gmail.com. Then create a filter to send all mail sent to JSmith+macrumors@gmail.com to your MacRumors folder, or spam folder, or trash, the possibilities are endless.

DYERS? (Did you even read the summary?) They mentioned this exact feature quite clearly.

Still, as others have mentioned, this is problematic in two ways: first, even an amateur programmer can write a line or two to strip off this predicable part of the address, thus exposing your "real" e-mail address. Second, many Web forms have stupid designers who write bad checking regexps and don't accept "+" as a valid character, even though it is.

I think this feature in Gmail is mostly useful for easily filtering things. For example, if I voluntarily sign up to get advertisement notifications from the grocery store or my favorite clothing stores, I might append "+stores" or "+ads" or something, then automatically filter them into a Gmail folder/label so that they won't clutter my regular inbox.

Gmail has another feature: you can put a period anywhere in your address, and it will still work. This has the advantage of being accepted in pretty much any Web form but the disadvantage of also being quite predictable by spammers, who can eliminate or move the period and circumvent your efforts, plus you are of course more limited in the combinations you can come up with yourself when doing this (since you have to work with the characters you already have).

Nevertheless, Apple's proposal looks better than either this or Mailiantor-type solutions. For myself, I've often contemplated setting up temporary accounts on my home server (also a public-facing mail server for my domain, though I never use it for "production" purposes) with e-mail addresses, but since I'm hosting it myself I'd rather not bring in a lot of spam-bouncing traffic if I can avoid it.