Email semi-hosted @ Gmail
I’ve got a domain name which need to be able to receive email from (anything)@domainname.com (catch all). However, as you know already, these days it means getting a lot of spam. And by a lot I’m talking like hundreds everyday.
I’ve setup a server with all sorts of anti spam & anti virus defenses. Unfortunately, the spam is still coming through in bulk. These vermints really need to be on the receiving end sometimes, enjoying their important mailbox bombarded by torrents of cheap viagra offers. Anyway …
I got an idea 2 days ago - how about if I redirect the incoming email to a Gmail account, let Gmail kill the spam, then I can fetch the (clean) mailbox with their POP3 feature ?
Sounds good to me, since I assumed Google would have far better resources to deal with spam, and therefore able to defend their mailbox better that me.
So I setup my mailserver to redirect the incoming mail for that domain to Google, and I waited.
After a day, I got about 5 spam in my Gmail Inbox… and 300 of them in the Spam folder. Hooray ! 
My server loves Google too now. SpamAssassin (and others) has been torturing it for some time, especially with those massive influx of spam. Now it just redirect the whole lot, and forget about it.
And I’m happy for obvious reasons.
Kudos to Google.
August 10th, 2006 09:18
I’ve seen this kind of trick in “Hacking GMail” book by Ben Hammersley. Published by Wiley.
August 10th, 2006 10:40
apa jadinya kalo isp juga nge-host imelnya disana? hihi…
August 10th, 2006 12:52
been using this method for a while, the problem is with the reply address not carried on and thus not properly flagged.
August 11th, 2006 02:22
mungkin spam berkurang, tapi bandwidth yang termakan juga jadi minimal 2x lipat untuk forwarding ke gmail lalu mengambilnya kembali. inti masalah spamming adalah bandwidth yang terbuang sia-sia.
August 11th, 2006 02:59
Why don’t try http://www.google.com/hosted/?
Langsung di Host di Googlenya dan gratis.
August 11th, 2006 04:02
beta - I never read that book before. honestly
treespotter - I haven’t stumbled into that problem, will check. thanks for the heads up
ryosaeba - agree, but at the moment I value my time more, so I compromised my bandwidth usage for it.
sunaryo - I try not to be too dependent on somebody else. with this setup, it’s quick and easy to move somewhere else.
btw; thanks for your theme (used here), Dreamhost chose it along with other themes and bundled it up with their wordpress package. well done
August 14th, 2006 13:57
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August 28th, 2006 02:08
[...] Akismet ngadat. Pantesan saja kok (tumben) ada beberapa spam bisa nyelonong dan lebih banyak lagi yang melenggang kangkung di Muslimblog. *pegel juga ngapusnya..:) Dan buat mas Harry, kelihatannya ada beberapa yang sudah terlanjur nampang. [...]
October 16th, 2006 14:05
what took you so long….
http://blog.indosiar.com/dennyhalim/?op=readblog&idblog=27612
May 25th, 2007 13:28
[...] ini tidak menghemat devisa negara memang. Saya menggunakannya karena anti-spam yang cukup baik (seperti kata Harry) yang dimiliki GMail dan reliability-nya yang bisa diandalkan. Dan hebatnya, kalau kita POP3, yang [...]
May 29th, 2007 12:30
isp email host nya gimana juga ya kalo google ?? he he he spam emang buat pusing tp kadang dibutuhkan!(http://www.melonmanis.com)
April 13th, 2008 07:49
Nice idea. I’ll use it for my domains. Thank you.
April 17th, 2008 15:20
I get very little spam in gmail
April 30th, 2008 05:59
Nice idea! Your spam problem comes from spam crawler robots. They crawl your site to add your email addresses their spam lists. Make your email addresses invisible to spam crawlers. Hide your mail addresses from robots in plain sight. Visitors to your web pages can read and click on your email addresses the same way they do now. Robots will not find them. Stay off spam lists.
May 8th, 2008 16:19
never had any probs with gmail tbh
June 13th, 2008 14:02
[...] ini tidak menghemat devisa negara memang. Saya menggunakannya karena anti-spam yang cukup baik (seperti kata Harry) yang dimiliki GMail dan reliability-nya yang bisa diandalkan. Dan hebatnya, kalau kita POP3, yang [...]
July 3rd, 2008 02:50
That is an excellent idea. I use gmail as my main email address now because of the excellent way they filter out spam. My inbox used to be cluttered. Now it’s nice checking my mail and not having hundreds of nonsense emails sitting in my inbox.