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

newagemac said:
The Mail app in Mavericks works great. My guess is you are using that non standard terribly implemented IMAP email service known as Gmail.
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That may be the case, but Gmail worked great before Mavericks for me and now, Mail will simply stop checking email. While I'm not a fan of Google by any stretch of the imagination, they are probably the largest/most popular email provider in the world and Mail purports to support them natively when you set up and account. There's no denying that mail has several issues including....

1) Just not delivering mail until a restart of the application
2) Delayed loading of messages
3) Poor performance when viewing some mail attachments (probably connected with Quick Look performance issues in Mavericks)

Apple has admitted that Mail is broken and continues to try to get this right. It wouldn't surprise me if Gmail was jerking Apple around (they've done this before with Gmail).
 
As usual, Apple throws a patent application for any little idea they have, be it original or unoriginal, at the wall to see what sticks.
 
RMo said:
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).
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Feature? That's a bug, and a pretty significant one. If you create a john.doe@gmail.com address, you'll get any emails sent to johndoe@gmail.com as well.
 
Good idea. Why do we even need to give our email address to register everywhere? In my mind it's such an overkill to provide an email address when all you want to do is download a file, post a comment somewhere, view some content, order a one-off item, or something like that. What does that have to do with an email address?
 
I'm doing that since years now. Service-specific email. For MR here it might looks like mr201402@mydomain.net
a nickname for the service, a date information when I joined (also to make it less guessable).

Technically they are just forwarders into my main mail accounts. The only weakness here is when I reply to an email from those services I expose my fixed email. I'm not yet good in spoofing my own email sender address while using iPad
 
I like this idea. If icloud mail goes unlimited storage for free like yahoo and gmail, I will drop my yahoo acct.

I also wish for better obliteration of identity during web surfing, that any URL chosen would first go to an spple server before connecting to the url's site.
 
Or you can just do what everyone does and just have an account that is setup for spam :rolleyes: I don't get a single unsolicited email on my primary account.
 
randian said:
What's novel or patentable here? Disposable email addresses have been provided by numerous email providers for years
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It always amazes me how people confuse features and benefits. Yes, this feature is not new. The difference is that most people are not aware of it because it's not simple or easy. That's what Apple does: take existing tech and make it usable by all. That's the real innovation.
 
newagemac said:
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.
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thats pretty smart actually, thanks! :) :apple:
 
Locating SPAM at its source.

Now if Apple would only build the laser satellite to destroy those sources when it finds them.
 
It's called iCloud. I used up all 3 of the aliases they gave me, each one giving me @me.com AND @icloud.com. So I have 8 email addresses going to one inbox. Victory! I can't believe this is patentable.

Mailinator, by the way, is perfect if you don't even care about the account you're making.
 
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cwt1nospam said:
It always amazes me how people confuse features and benefits. Yes, this feature is not new. The difference is that most people are not aware of it because it's not simple or easy. That's what Apple does: take existing tech and make it usable by all. That's the real innovation.
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That's what I was thinking reading through this thread. If it's so ubiquitous then why doesn't everyone I know use it? (Most people I know don't...)

That said, whether or not the patent is 'valid' isn't even up to Apple. It's not really surprising that a company would try to patent something. The complaints that I most commonly see directed at Apple should really be directed at the broken patent system.
 
"...but as with many patents, it is unclear if Apple has plans to move forward with such a system."

Move fwd Apple, move fwd!
 
This is what I do with my old .mac aliases. Just another great, often unheralded, feature of .mac.
(Tries not to chant iDisk iDisk iDisk...)
 
newagemac said:
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.
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Didn't Apple already admit that their Mail app does not work? Even suggesting a workaround?
 
Lennholm said:
As usual, Apple throws a patent application for any little idea they have, be it original or unoriginal, at the wall to see what sticks.
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As usual, someone complains when Apple does exactly what everyone else does with patents. With Apple's long history of being ripped off, they learned how to play the game.
 
Great idea. I wish Gmail would implement REAL aliases like Outlook has. But Outlook has a limit of 10 and that's not enough. Gmail's "+text" and "na.m.e" options are worthless for hiding your real address.

Using a custom domain works but is still identifying since the domain is unique to only you. That's why Gmail & iCloud needs to have a system that offers real aliases (with reply function) like Outlook has. But they NEED to offer more than 10 aliases. That's hardly enough for main accounts let alone junk stuff.
 
I use vendor@mydomain.com.
I have done this for years.
I know where the spam comes from and can send that email address to spam if it ever gets sold. The byproduct is that I know who sold it.

I never reply to those so spoofing the outgoing is not an issue.
It all ends up in a single "catch all" email account.

The process that apple uses if defined can be patented but not the idea.
They should have never issued this patent.
 
Spamex has a little popup, and you put a link in your Favorites. If you're browsing a site, and need to create an email alias, you click on the Favorite. You get the popup and choose either to have Spamex auto-generate a random address, or you type one in.

I usually use, say, for site example.com, jtara-example@spamex.com.

Since I also use LastPass, I paste that address into LastPass if the site uses email address for login ID.

The popup has a handy search, you can view a log showing each forwarded message, and you can list by each address used to send to your alias. You can "shut off" either an entire alias, or block specific senders.

If you use a unique address for each site, then you can identify the sources of spam. Then you can shut off that address, and choose to either discontinue using that site, or generate a new address and to to the site and change your registered email address.

There is a way to use your own domain instead of spamex's, but I don't like that option. If you ever discontinue Spamex or they go out of business, now it's your problem. If you use their address, it's their problem. (Or the new domain holder... that domain is toast for any future use...) On the flip side, you'd have to go around to a lot of websites and change your registered address.
 
It would be a step in the right direction if Apple would just incorporate the spam processing in OS X's Mail.app into iCloud so it would work on iOS devices for iCloud users.
 
Prior art...

Lots of people have been doing this for years, you have a domain name, you add the company you are signing up to at the start and you know who has given out your email or is slack with security..

So if your domain was hello.com

You would sign up to macrumors with macrumors@hello.com
And yahoo with yahoo@hello.com
Email to your domain are sent to what ever email box is configured e.g. Gmail
Any issues you just black hole the one address I.e. Just yahoo@hello.com

Granted Apples, solution may be more polished but you are stuck using Apple for email, it won't work with gmail for instance.
 
Hardtimes said:
or you could just use Gmail. Not a single spam email in 10 years.
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What's your secret (and I mean this seriously)? My Gmail account and the accounts of friends and family have serious spam issues and they're knowledgable enough to avoid using their email accounts in matters that may sell their address or otherwise create spam.

Since .Mac, my Apple email has had zero, that's right, zero spam related matters. I had to give up my Gmail account(s).

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Sangoma said:
Didn't Apple already admit that their Mail app does not work? Even suggesting a workaround?
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Mostly with Gmail accounts, which has been a matter with iOS as well. I've found most of the problems can be addressed by properly configuring Gmail accounts directly via Google Mail settings, followed my Mac Mail Gmail preferences (or, simply avoiding Gmail altogether).
 
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