Jul 6th, 2007 Spam Free Email (For the iPhone)
Something I’ve been meaning to do for years is strategically route all my email to a single, private account, and use a reply-to address that’s already known, memorable and branded. Ironically, the iPhone, and its lack of spam filter, became the perfect catalyst for me to set it up. (And no, I [still] don’t have an iPhone. I did this in enthusiastic preparation for my future iPhone purchase.)
First, I made sure all my publicly-known email addresses route to my Gmail account. Google’s email application is quick, accessible, and free. Better than that, though, their spam protection is just about perfect; almost never returning false-positives, and never in need of an update.
Still, even with all its pluses, Gmail isn’t my final solution. The “conversational” approach doesn’t translate well across multiple platforms (such as the iPhone), and since it doesn’t support the IMAP protocol, it’s not ideal for using multiple clients — desktop or mobile.
Big kudos to Google, though, because Gmail filters spam upon receiving; meaning if you set a forward address, Gmail will only forward non-spam. Hooray!
All I had to do was create a new email (IMAP) account with my web host, set Gmail to forward to that account, and set the reply-to in my email client(s) to my branded address. All incoming mail is routed through Google, and all outgoing is shown coming from my public email address(es).
Here’s the key: Of course, any curious and intelligent recipient can inspect the email headers and retrieve my “private” email address — that’s okay. Since I’m not going to give out that email address, I can easily (and regularly) change it. The only thing I need to update is Gmail’s forwarding settings.
Hopefully this solution will prove itself suitable when I’ve got my iPhone and can’t be bothered to delete all the spam I would normally receive — one at a time, since the mail app doesn’t allow multiple, simultaneous deletions.
Update: Brian Warren has pointed out that you can easily setup Mail.app to allow the reply-to address to be set on the fly.
Sean Sperte is Geek & Mild. His passion for technology and media, along with his interest in 
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Comments
Phil Bowell
July 7, 2007
How do you control the email address you are sending mail from? Surely this only means that you have one email address you can reply from or send mail from?
Sean
July 7, 2007
Most mail clients allows you to set a reply-to address on the fly, it’s just usually hidden. In Mail.app, you can type cmd-opt-r to hide/show the reply-to field when composing a message.
I don’t have need to set it to anything but my default — but technically I could.
Phil Bowell
July 7, 2007
That’s interesting I didn’t know about that. So You have one email you send from and can specify which one they reply to. Interesting. Is it possible to do that with iPhone’s version of Mail.app?
Sean
July 7, 2007
My sources say, no, you cannot set the reply-to in the iPhone’s mail app. However, if you use a non-.Mac account, you can set the outgoing email address in the settings — not quite as graceful as on-the-fly, but it still works.
dustin
July 7, 2007
this is exactly what I did with my iPhone (thanks to Sperte’s tip). It is possible to set the “reply-to” address on the iPhone. When setting up the email account on the phone, it asks for “name,” “email address” and “description” before it asks for the server info. Under“email address” type the “reply-to” address. Works like a charm.
Brett Peters
July 10, 2007
I love your graphic. It’s simple, but gets the technical idea across very quickly.
Nicely done.
Michael Montgomery
July 13, 2007
Good stuff, and I agree that Gmail is the best spam solution so far.
“Conversations” fit my mental communication model, so I just use Gmail in a browser tab.
Scott
July 14, 2007
Awsome! I’m soooo done with spam and I really hope this works. Today’s result – no spam has made it through Google (and no false-positives as far as I know). This may be the perfect solution and I think I owe you a beer :D
Phil Bowell
July 15, 2007
One thing I just wondered about this as I test it out, is the reply to address supposed to mask the address you send it from? It didn’t seem to when I just tried it.
Sean
July 15, 2007
Phil, I think it depends on your email client, but yes, it’s supposed to completely mask the address you send from. What email app are you using? Are you sending and receiving from the same one? What protocol (IMAP, POP3)?
Phil Bowell
July 15, 2007
I’m using Mail.app with an IMAP account. I sent it from address one to address one and set the reply to as address 2. Both were in the same client, would that be the problem?
I just tried again sending from address 2 to address 2 with reply to as address 1 and it said it was from address 2, with an seperate reply to address.
Sean
July 15, 2007
Phil, instead of using the “reply-to” field when composing a message, try going into the account settings and using the “email” field.
Phil Bowell
July 15, 2007
That works, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to specify each time which address it appears to be sent from. I’d need to be able to send email to people so that they didn’t see my personal address as I wouldn’t want clients to know that, only the one I use for work. It seems there is no way to stop it saying from address 1, reply to address 2 in the email. I would want it to completely hide the address it is sent from so it appears to be sent from the one they are replying to.
Brian Warren
July 22, 2007
I’ve been using this technique for at least 6 or 8 months now, and I can say it stands up over time. It’s a good plan and it’s a fantastic solution for the iPhone users out there. On the iPhone, I do use a separate email reply address than the private email account address. It works great.
Phil (and others) You can pre-fill out multiple reply address on Mail.app using commas, check it out , and just select from the dropdown menu which one you want to send from.
Martin Ström
October 11, 2007
Almost exacly my setup but insted of forwarding all my emails from gmail to my IMAP account, I only forward emails that aren’t sent by myself using a gmail-filter like this:
Has the words: -from: { my-first-public(at)email.com my-second-public(at)email.com }
(replace (at) to real at-sign)
Then I have set the iPhone to automatically BCC myself in the Mail settings and Mail.app (on the mac) to do the same (using custom headers so I didn’t have to show the BCC field every time Im writing a message).
Sildenafil citrate
November 24, 2007
Gmail i not best antispan desigion
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