Email problem with smtp servers

I guess this isn't actually web security - but it's linked. How can I keep my real email address secret? ie I want to have a mask on a genuine address, but thunderbird will put my gmail address on everything. I know some clients like Outlook support multiple identities, but as far as I know, only by downloading multiple copies of a message. Apparently thunderbird has a bug that doesn't allow you to chose smtp servers for each email address - it defaults to the top one on the list.

I used to be able to use yahoo settings to send all mail and that didn't put my yahoo address on, but now it will only send yahoo mail. Only gmail seems to accept mail from anywhere. When your address has to go on the wider internet, the amount of spam isn't funny!

Programs like outlook allow you to alter the "from" field in the email, but your real (i.e.e the sending email address) is still shown in the headers if i'm not mistaken. What you sound like want to do is spoof your email address, and while possible, it is not usually a good thing since many spam filters will block your address if it can't check it against the smtp server that sent it.

To be honest, I know it can't do much with the headers, but it stops my genuine email recipients replying to the wrong address and getting lost in gmail spam.

You simply can't keep it a secret; in the end, people have to know where to send the message. You can obfuscate for spam bots and just keep it private, but if you're sending someone a message, it's fair for them to have your address.

Your best bet would be to write a non-RFC compliant email sending application that specifically sends a false From: address.

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... Apparently thunderbird has a bug that doesn't allow you to chose smtp servers for each email address - it defaults to the top one on the list.

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I am not sure of what you are speaking.

I have multiple e-mail accounts ( albeit with the same ISP ) that are managed through Thunderbird ( on some of the computers I use: on some I use Seamonkey, a derivative of Thunderbird for the e-mail. )

My Default Outgoing SMTP Server is for the main account, but I can set up different outgoing servers ( based on user name ) for each account. I just scroll to the bottom of the “Mail and Newsgroups Account Settings” to “Outgoing Server (SMTP)” and add or edit for the individual accounts ( now reviewing Seamonkey settings, but I believe it is the same for the parent Thunderbird, as I have them set up the same way. )

Is this what you are referring to?

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Hi Moira,

Having read all this and following our conversation, I think that I understand your requirement?

It seems to be typical of a commercial or institutional environment. You want to use a standard "reply to" address, rather than defaulting to the one you happened to actually send your e-mail message from?

On the other hand you want the flexibility of using different locations and primary message creation services?

Please let me know if I am correct in my understanding?

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Originally Posted by Sonata Anthony

You simply can't keep it a secret; in the end, people have to know where to send the message. You can obfuscate for spam bots and just keep it private, but if you're sending someone a message, it's fair for them to have your address.

Your best bet would be to write a non-RFC compliant email sending application that specifically sends a false From: address.

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I think that is true for the most part it is easy to recieve emails from another account with forwarding but it is dificult to alter who it is sent from. Unless you have some sort of server that takes your sent emails and proxys them... I suposed it is possible

I think that the solution is to employ a mail forwarding service. This will be a paid for service whether it is provided by your normal mail host or a third party.

The mail will have their IP and I believe that you can specify the reply to address (or from address).

:)

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Originally Posted by nihil

Hi Moira,

You want to use a standard "reply to" address, rather than defaulting to the one you happened to actually send your e-mail message from?

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I think this will be your best bet in doing what you seek, however to mask your from address you would need to swap your "reply to" and "from addresses" Ex.. if "[email protected]" is your actual email addy and "[email protected]" is your fake one, put blah in the from address and bill in the reply to address. messages will show up being from "blah" not "bill". Now doing this may or may not work and may not be advisable depending on the SMTP server you are useing and also the person you send to will most likely delete it if they dont recognize who its from. also you can also get the correct info from the headers. It just depends on the knowledge level of the person your sending it to.

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Originally Posted by nihil

Hi Moira,

You want to use a standard "reply to" address, rather than defaulting to the one you happened to actually send your e-mail message from?

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I think this will be your best bet in doing what you seek, however to mask your from address you would need to swap your "reply to" and "from addresses" Ex.. if "[email protected]" is your actual email addy and "[email protected]" is your fake one, put blah in the from address and bill in the reply to address. messages will show up being from "blah" not "bill". Now doing this may or may not work and may not be advisable depending on the SMTP server you are useing and also the person you send to will most likely delete it if they dont recognize who its from. also you can also get the correct info from the headers. It just depends on the knowledge level of the person your sending it to.

moxquito that's an interesting concept. The test email I sent to myself did go from the gmail server OK and did have a reply to as whatever address I put in. Before this, I was just trying to alter the address the email was sent from, reasoning it would automatically put that email as the reply to address, but the problem was the yahoo and aol servers not accepting mail from each other's servers, or gmail's.

However I need a longer email to test this and when I get a chance I'll set up yahoo mail with yahoo server settings and try sending mail from the genuine yahoo account but with the reply to address that I want.

I'm sorry it's taken me two weeks to get round to replying to this, unfortunately I was taken into hospital in a coma a week before xmas, and have not long been back home. I'm only now starting to catch up on email I'm afraid. The hospital think I had some extreme kind of reaction to a drug or a mixture of drugs I took, including those prescribed for my arthritis. Anyway, I'm back now, fully recovered :)

>totally off topic<

Holy Shite

Good to hear you are ok Moira........

Must be some heavy duty drugs your taking..

I plan on becoming fairly comatose this evening.....with a fine bottle of single malt :)

then look for a new job in the new year

MLF

Thanks, morganlefay I'll certainly make sure nothing like this happens again. There were some pretty heavy drugs involved, and I'm sorry I just disappeared off the scene so to speak.

IKnowNot, yes that's exactly what I'm referring to, but the version of Thunderbird I'm using has a known bug in that it constantly defaults to the top SMTP server in the list, no matter which one you tell it to use. I've put in the SMTP server settings for each account, thinking I'd choose depending on which email address that particular email had gone from, but I find I need to delete the others to stop them being used.

Maybe I should just accept that I have to send all mail through gmail and not worry - I realise that the headers would show the true ISP anyway. However this wasn't an attempt to hide where I was sending mail from, just some way of keeping my gmail account from being obvious to recipients and prevent them replying to it (unless I'd sent an email via gmail), as that account gets loads of spam and often a genuine email gets lost among it all.

I'll first of all try moxquito's idea and see if that works.

Edit Right, I've got a bit further with this. Seems this copy of Thunderbird [i]doesn't[/] have this particular bug, as I can set different smtp servers for different email accounts. However, while this works really well with sending Yahoo and AOL mail from those accounts, the minute I try to send from a mask which points to these email addresses, sending fails. That doesn't matter too much with AOL, they've always been like that and I don't point too many important email masks to that address, I have multiple identities for Yahoo and it will only send Yahoo mail through their smtp server. I can put a different "reply to" address as per moxquito's idea, but it still shows my name followed by my real yahoo address in the from field. AOL was better, simply showing my name and only holding the mouse over it gave the true from address.

So anyway, it's pleasing to discover I can set different smtp servers, even though Yahoo doesn't seem too cooperative. I still find only gmail sends any email from any address. I've set aol mail to go through their servers since I don't use a mask on top of that address to send mail from, and have just put Yahoo mail back to going through gmail addresses. From what I've read, Yahoo were going to charge people to use their servers to send mail other than their own - maybe if that's true I could look at paying because it is quite important to me.

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Originally Posted by Moira

To be honest, I know it can't do much with the headers, but it stops my genuine email recipients replying to the wrong address and getting lost in gmail spam.

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heheh if you wanna do stuff like this
get a 10 minute mail account...

That wouldn't serve the purpose - what if people started saving and replying to the 10 minute account? I'd not get their emails!