3 ms·

This is a neat/good idea. I would love to hear if there is a counter argument why NOT to do this, though. However, your current logic makes a lot of sense to me

This is a neat/good idea. I would love to hear if there is a counter argument why NOT to do this, though. However, your current logic makes a lot of sense to me. It's awesome that you (the OP of the article -- if it's not the HN op) could think outside of the box for this great solution. The only argument I could potentially see is that by coming through the provider and not the "sendee" is the "real" mailbox spam filter. Maybe "joe@bob.com" gets marked as spam in the mail client but not if it's from "Google+", etc.

unavoidable 14y ago
You would not want to do this if for some reason you wanted to anonymize the sender or at least act as a proxy to protect the sender's information (as you noted). But another reason is publicity/visibility - startups need plenty of name recognition, and having your name be associated with a useful service is certainly one way of doing it (as long as your customers don't end up classifying as "spam" like the OP's customers).
damncabbage 14y ago
GitHub, Basecamp and Facebook have all been doing the same (eg. "Joe Bob" <blah-2131214241421@github.com>), using the unique identifier in the email address name to figure out what message a user is replying to. Kudos to the OP for the write-up; there are still too many companies taking the Company Name approach.
AgentConundrum 14y ago
> Maybe "joe@bob.com" gets marked as spam in the mail client but not if it's from "Google+", etc. I'm assuming they're just changing the display name on the email, rather than the 'From:' email address itself. That is, instead of "Tabule <no-reply@tabuleapp.com>", it's now "John Smith <no-reply@tabuleapp.com>". The email doesn't get marked as spam because it's still claiming to be from the server that sent it, and it has the appropriate MX records and those sorts of things.
- geofft 14y ago
  The thing that worries me with that approach is overzealous "add to address book" functionality. I don't want to be clicking "John Smith" in some dropdown and have it go to some noreply address at some third party. I personally solve this by typing in full email addresses and memorizing my friends' email addresses, but I gather that's not how the world at large works.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

unavoidable 14y ago

You would not want to do this if for some reason you wanted to anonymize the sender or at least act as a proxy to protect the sender's information (as you noted). But another reason is publicity/visibility - startups need plenty of name recognition, and having your name be associated with a useful service is certainly one way of doing it (as long as your customers don't end up classifying as "spam" like the OP's customers).

damncabbage 14y ago

GitHub, Basecamp and Facebook have all been doing the same (eg. "Joe Bob" <blah-2131214241421@github.com>), using the unique identifier in the email address name to figure out what message a user is replying to. Kudos to the OP for the write-up; there are still too many companies taking the Company Name approach.

AgentConundrum 14y ago

> Maybe "joe@bob.com" gets marked as spam in the mail client but not if it's from "Google+", etc. I'm assuming they're just changing the display name on the email, rather than the 'From:' email address itself. That is, instead of "Tabule <no-reply@tabuleapp.com>", it's now "John Smith <no-reply@tabuleapp.com>". The email doesn't get marked as spam because it's still claiming to be from the server that sent it, and it has the appropriate MX records and those sorts of things.

geofft 14y ago
The thing that worries me with that approach is overzealous "add to address book" functionality. I don't want to be clicking "John Smith" in some dropdown and have it go to some noreply address at some third party. I personally solve this by typing in full email addresses and memorizing my friends' email addresses, but I gather that's not how the world at large works.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]