Seeking pseudo-anonymous mail server/router

He has: 5 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

I run a subscription site where my users exchange e-mails. I'd like my users to be able to send to [[email protected]][email protected][/email] (where username is their login name at mysite) and have that translated to [[email protected]][email protected][/email] (their real e-mail). I know such mail systems are used by a variety of dating sites such as match.com and others like craigslist.com.

The system should:

  • Translate a username to real e-mail (from my database) and send the mail.
  • Strip personal info from mail headers
  • mail errors back to the original sender without disclosing the recipient's real e-mail address.

Any ideas where I can go for such a beast?

druagord's picture

He has: 335 posts

Joined: May 2003

if your in control of your mail server you just ahave to do a redirect of the mail when it comes in this is relatively easy depending on your mail server for exemple in sendmail just add this line for your user in virtusertable

[email protected] [email protected]

IF , ELSE , WHILE isn't that what life is all about

He has: 5 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

Thanks for the reply. However it doesn't quite meet the first requirement as I'd like to pull it dynamically from a database. It doesn't address requirements two or three at all. Sad

druagord's picture

He has: 335 posts

Joined: May 2003

sorry i answered too fast the way i see it you should configure a catchall adress in your domain then use an automatic mailreader to read all messages to that adress like majordomo. you can then script what to do with each messages.

IF , ELSE , WHILE isn't that what life is all about

He has: 5 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

Sending is not the biggest issue, which can be done with an alias list as you mention. It's returned mail (on errors) and dealing with a zillion different error formats. I was therfore hoping to buy a commercial mail rerouting product -- if one exists. I was reluctant to build it myself with all the intricacies of error handling.

Thank you however.

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