[Info-vax] bizarre SMTP problem

[MetaEd]

On Apr 10, 9:24 am, moro... at world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney)
wrote:
> "Plussed" mailboxes as a way of creating sub-mailboxes has been around for
> a while.  Not too heavily used.

Procmail <http://www.procmail.org/> made plussed boxes popular among
UNIX professionals for automatic disposition of mail (presorting,
forwarding, list processing). Where I was employed in the 90's it was
the tool of choice. A search for "procmail" with google.com/groups
shows it's still being used quite a bit, though some of the queries
are about how to convert old procmail recipes to gmail filters.

> As a spamfighting tool it's not too useful
> since it's too easy for a spammer to figure out that if foo+... at example.com
> is a valid but tagged email address, f... at example.com is valid as well,
> but not tagged.

Unless you made the mistake of giving the untagged address out, you
simply trash anything that comes to it. The trick for the spammer
becomes guessing your private tags.

Best wishes,

Edward