PLUS: Email Forwarding

[Aqualung71]

As someone who has recently had trouble with emailing PBEM turns, I think this is a most excellent idea

[Beta]

Originally posted by BigFree
I would switch to a lifetime membership if we had this.

Ditto.

[bongo]

Well, it *is* an idea that makes the PLUS subscription even better.

SPAM needs to be taken care of though ( for scanning mails with both antivirus and antispam btw )

I work in an IT-department and 70-80% of all incoming mails are either spam or viruses. Just opening up the username@apolyton.com range will inevitabely attract spammers. You only need *one* dishonest member to alert spammers that a new interesting target has appeared. All a spammer need to do is to scan the site for usernames and send spam to *@apolyton.com

We may not be that attractive for spam about refinancing and viagra but we sure as hell are attractive for sending offers on pirated software!!

We do have a 'send email to user' button already don't we? We could modify this to allow attachements. Much harder to abuse than just opening for mail forwarding.

[McMeadows]

Thanks Paddy for the url...

Most definately a great idea to get PBEM's started faster.

I presume the e-mail alliases are actually only for "internal" use. Isn't it then easy and 100% safe to compare an incoming e-mail's sender address with the alias-list at the apolyton server level.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

There are some strange people that change their email accounts frequently, but there are FAR MORE that never update their Apoly info, and consequently their email info is wrong. So forwarding would just email to an extinct account.

[Ming]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
There are some strange people that change their email accounts frequently, but there are FAR MORE that never update their Apoly info, and consequently their email info is wrong. So forwarding would just email to an extinct account.

Lately... Mark and Dan have been on a serious effort to change that. If you don't have a valid email address in your record, the odds are, you will get put in the "users with bad email" group, and won't be able to post again until you change it to a working one. So if somebody is still an active poster here, the chances of the email address being valid is climbing every day.

[Skanky Burns]

And despite the fact that people who have invalid email addresses cannot post at all, we have had a few complaint threads due to people's accounts being temporarily suspended. The fact that multiple people manage to get a message to Poly while their account is down is quite an achievement.

[Ming]

I hate when people whine about their accounts being temporarily suspended all because they were too lazy to keep their email address updated. Some of the PM's I get make it sound like we are the spawn of the devil for restricting their accounts. They think it's our fault and that we must do something about it NOW...

Lazy bastards

[DrSpike]

The complaint threads are funny though. Time for another sweep of bannings I'd say.

[Ming]

Give me a few links and I can start today

[DrSpike]

Well I don't really know whose email account is invalid.

[MarkG]

FYI,

the last couple of weeks, we have a new system in place which gets bounced back messages, retrieves the responsible email address and moved the associated username to the "bad mail" users group.

PLUS users are exempted from this procedure (if there is an error with their email nothing happens to their account )

[Skanky Burns]

What happens to PLUS users should their email account be invalid, then? Not that it affects me personally as my email account is valid and will remain so.

[MarkG]

nothing, we spank them in private

[Skanky Burns]

Cool.