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SpamGourmet

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 - SpamGourmet
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Pros & Cons

SpamGourmet Specs

Free: Yes
Type: Personal

SpamGourmet (free) has some interesting innovations, but it also has limitations on how many messages each address will be able to accept. There are two modes, No-brainer and Advanced. In the former, you get a user name and then you can give out self-destructing addresses in the form whatever.n.username@spamgourmet.com, where whatever is some word you choose and is the number of messages (up to 20) that you can receive at that address until it self-destructs—after which messages will return errors.

For example, crazylegs.4.larryseltzer@spamgourmet.com will be able to receive four messages, and then senders will get error messages. The problem is, anyone can send you a message using a disposable account that you did not create: for example, IAMSPAM.20.larryseltzer@spamgourmet.com.

There are advanced options to limit the number of possible disposable addresses, but if this product became widely used it would be easy for spamsters to work around the limits. Advanced mode has several other features, the most interesting being that you can also add trusted senders—people who can send messages without contributing to the maximum message count for that address. This will let you use a disposable address forever for legitimate purposes—until it gets used by a spammer, at which point it'll pass away.

Final Thoughts

 - SpamGourmet

SpamGourmet

2.0 Subpar

About Our Expert

Larry Seltzer

Larry Seltzer

Larry Seltzer has been writing software for and English about computers ever since—much to his own amazement—he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983.

He was one of the authors of NPL and NPL-R, fourth-generation languages for microcomputers by the now-defunct DeskTop Software Corporation. (Larry is sad to find absolutely no hits on any of these +products on Google.) His work at Desktop Software included programming the UCSD p-System, a virtual machine-based operating system with portable binaries that pre-dated Java by more than 10 years.

For several years, he wrote corporate software for Mathematica Policy Research (they're still in business!) and Chase Econometrics (not so lucky) before being forcibly thrown into the consulting market. He bummed around the Philadelphia consulting and contract-programming scenes for a year or two before taking a job at NSTL (National Software Testing Labs) developing product tests and managing contract testing for the computer industry, governments and publication.

In 1991 Larry moved to Massachusetts to become Technical Director of PC Week Labs (now eWeek Labs). He moved within Ziff Davis to New York in 1994 to run testing at Windows Sources. In 1995, he became Technical Director for Internet product testing at PC Magazine and stayed there till 1998.

Since then, he has been writing for numerous other publications, including Fortune Small Business, Windows 2000 Magazine (now Windows and .NET Magazine), ZDNet and Sam Whitmore's Media Survey.

He is co-author of Linksys Networks: The Official Guide, author of ADMIN911: Windows 2000 Terminal Services and Webmaster of ADMIN911 and CPA911.

Larry can be reached at larryseltzer@ziffdavis.com.

Check out Larry Seltzer's introductory column: Ziff Davis' Security Supersite: Blocking the Bad Guys

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