Contributor
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3 Messages
Disposable addresses and e-mail clients
I consider the disposable addresses to be one of the big plusses of my att.net e-mail addresses - when I start dealing with a new company online I usually create a disposable address to use with them, both so that if they give out my address widely (deliberately or because they got hacked) I can delete the address, and because it makes it very easy to filter my e-mail into appropriate folders. But with the new changes in e-mail security requiring sender authentication (which is a great idea if implemented properly), I now have problems sending e-mail from my e-mail client (a version of Thunderbird) using a disposable address. (I had no such problems until the last few months.) It seems that outbound.att.net does not recognize my disposable addresses as valid senders. I have the SMTP server settings for outbound.att.net set to use the main account for the authentication (since the disposable addresses are yahoo.com addresses, not att.net like the server and the main account, and even if possible, it would be a pain to create a whole new SMTP server setup for each disposable address). The only way to send mail from my disposable addresses seems to be using webmail, which I find much less efficient.
I would really like to see this fixed, i.e. set up the outbound server for e-mail so that it authenticates using the base address but recognizes the associated disposable addresses as valid senders using that one authentication. It seems the most reasonable way to do things - if fact, webmail works that way - it's just not how the SMTP implementation has been done so far. Are there any plans to fix this (I know it will take time even if the problem is addressed), and/or any simple work-arounds for now?
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lem3
Guru
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498 Messages
10 years ago
I understand, it wasn't clear you were associating an identity to each disposable address.
I only have one account but with multiple disposable addresses. I just created a new identity in SeaMonkey (Thunderbird cousin) using one of the disposables as the email address and my default smtp.att.yahoo.com as outgoing server.
I then composed a new message, using the dropdown to select the new identity email as "From". I was able to send the email without difficulty, I verified it arrived at the destination. Mail sent to the new address arrives in the Inbox of the primary account in my client.
So, unless there's a difference in the ways we've created the identities, the best I can offer is Works For Me.
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lem3
Guru
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498 Messages
10 years ago
When you create a new disposable address, do you create a corresponding new account in your email client? Using the default SMTP settings?
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Leo67114
Contributor
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3 Messages
10 years ago
No, sorry, that's not how it works. My paid att.net account provides 10 different active actual e-mail accounts, which I devote to different purposes (e.g., one for investments, another for personal e-mails, another for public uses like letters to the editor, another for most online purchases, etc.) Each of these e-mail accounts has a single account created for it in my e-mail client. Most of these e-mail accounts have one or more associated disposable addresses, some have 10 or more disposable addresses (the investing e-mail account is one such, as when I seek investing info from a new source experimentally, I give them a new disposable address). I probably have over 30 disposable addresses in use. The mail to each disposable address goes to the inbox of the corresponding real e-mail account, and my e-mail client account downloads all e-mails going to its associated inbox to my computer, and then sorts that into folders based partly on the "To:" address (i.e., the disposable address used).
Creating a new account in my e-mail client program for each disposable address, if it worked, should result in each inbox message being downloaded by all of the client's accounts tied to that one real e-mail address! So if I had 12 addresses (11 disposable plus the real address) for a real e-mail address, and created an account in my client for each, each message to any of those would get downloaded 12 times. (And I doubt it would work, as I doubt inbound.att.net would allow login by a disposable address which is always of the form *@yahoo.com. Also note the disposable addresses don't get passwords assigned to them.)
I do create an "identity" within the e-mail client account for each related disposable address (an identity is basically an allowed "From:" address for outgoing mail). But the default SMTP server settings for an identity are the SMTP server settings for the account the identity is under. Creating a new SMTP server setting for each disposable address/identity, instead of for each account, would complicate things greatly, even if it worked - and I doubt it would for reasons similar to the above concerns about logging into inbound.att.net with a disposable address.
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Leo67114
Contributor
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3 Messages
10 years ago
Thank you, thank you, thank you. That works!
As it turns out, when I said I was using a version of Thunderbird, I was referring to SeaMonkey. I was afraid whoever read this might not recognize it. In any case, the problem was the SMTP server name. The help page I located starting at att.net said to use outbound.att.net, but when I changed that to smtp.att.yahoo.com as you suggested (which I was unaware of as an option), it worked for outgoing messages from both the main address and from the disposable addresses affiliated with it. Exactly what I want!
Again, thanks for your patience and your solution. It's perfect for my purposes. Why the help page I used (at http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB401568&cv=805&br=BR&ct=9000247&pv=3#fbid=Bt9r4UzyK8a ) lists outbound.att.net rather than smtp.att.yahoo.com is a mystery, but now that I know about the latter, I'm happy!
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lem3
Guru
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498 Messages
10 years ago
I seem to recall we were told at one point we were supposed to change from smtp...... to outbound.... I took the "if it's not broken, don't fix it" approach and never switched. And now I don't plan to.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could submit a real support ticket saying disposable addresses don't work on outbound.att.net but they do on smtp.att.yahoo.com and a week later someone would write saying "we fixed it, they both work now"?
Good luck finding someone on the help line who even knows what a disposable address is.
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Superhuman
Contributor
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1 Message
7 years ago
"AT&T is the most evil company in the world."
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