[3np]

And/Or give everyone a unique address. (Possibly with a unified one for "friends and family", if you want to be super strict even combined with the approach in your link)

Sieve filter to put it in folders derived from the name (you can do this dynamically, no need to put every address in there). Now you're playing with power.

For the first time in decades I feel in control of my e-mail again.

[BeetleB]

This was my original idea to solve the email problem, and I actually started coding it up. Then I realized a whitelist works as well and is much easier to implement.

[3np]

I'm curious why you even started coding? All it takes is an email host where you have a catch-all and a sieve filter on a couple of lines.

I saw your whitelist approach before, got a bit inspired, and considered doing the same thing but never got around to it because it seemed like too much of a hassle (it needs to have not only a separate running process but also maintain persistent state). Funny how perceptions differ.

While both share some benefits I think they're somewhat orthogonal. Your approach mostly works for humans mailing you individually (as you noted) while the biggest benefit for mine is for group- mass- and automated e-mail.

IMO the golden thing would be to combine them, only using the whitelist for a subset of addresses you actually use for personal comms.

[BeetleB]

> I'm curious why you even started coding? All it takes is an email host where you have a catch-all and a sieve filter on a couple of lines.

Well my original idea was to have a unique email address for each person. So I needed a way to generate one on the fly. But now that you mention it, a catch all would have worked - I could generate the email even after giving the person his/her unique address.

Still, there would be some burden to actually create those custom email addresses every time I meet someone new.

The other side of the coding would be to ensure that when I email someone, the From/Reply-To addresses are the ones for that person. But what if I need to email 2 different people?

For me, having a single email address for family/friends wouldn't work - it always gets leaked somehow.