Most of this documentation is based on the pioneering work of Emory Lundberg.

If you want to send dated or tagged addresses, you have to configure your mail client to use the tmda wrapper for sendmail. Dated addresses are only valid for a set period of time (5 days by default). If I send an email to someone, I generally want them to be able to respond to me with minimum hassle. Assuming that my correspondent responds within the timeout period, the response will come right through to my mailbox, whether he is on my whitelist or not. If he takes longer than the timeout period, he will be asked to confirm it. So, I compose a message.

From: Generic User <generic+dated+1037814427.3368ad@rupture.net>
To: John Doe <jdoe@example.com>

Mister Doe replies:

From: John Doe <jdoe@example.com>
To: Generic User <generic+dated+1037814427.3368ad@rupture.net>

TMDA will allow it into my mailbox without asking Mister Doe to confirm. This is useful for initiating conversations and posting to mailing lists where the content might be archived on the web. If a spammer finds your post, grabs your (dated) address, and sends mail to that (dated) address, he'll have to do it within the timeout period (not likely in my experience). Otherwise, he will be sent a confirmation request, just like any other unsolicited email. If your real intended recipient does not respond in a timely manner, he too will be asked to confirm.

Tagged addresses are for managing mailing list subscriptions and the like.

This section is only valid for terminal-based email clients, like pine and mutt. If you use TWIG or Outlook Express, you can stop reading now. It ain't gonna work.

Pine and mutt use a variable to tell them where sendmail is. In your ~/.pinerc, create/change:

sendmail-path=/usr/local/bin/tmda-sendmail

Or in your ~/.muttrc, create/change:

set sendmail=/usr/local/bin/tmda-sendmail

That's it. Now outgoing messages will be sent according to the rules in ~/.tmda/filters/outgoing. We will touch on creating addresses for things like websites. You have an amazon, ebay, whatever list account. You can create a keyword based email address valid for anyone to use by doing:

generic@froody:~> tmda-address -k hotsex

generic+hotsex.bffad1@rupture.net

generic@froody:~> 

You can use that email address for the 'hotsex' distribution list that you're interested in, and it will slip by TMDA and they wont have to confirm if they send to THAT address.

Anyone can send to that address though, so if 'hotsex' sells that email address (those FOUL BASTARDS) to a spammer or something, guess what? You can REVOKE that address in your incoming file, and ta-da, they're dead in the water. Note the sample REVOKE messages in ~/.tmda/filters/incoming ... you can put in your revoked create addresses and not worry about it anymore!

These are variables you can pass to tmda-address:

	-a <address>
        --address <address>
           Specify a different address as the basis for the tagged address.
           
        -k <keyword>
        --keyword <keyword>
           Generate a keyword-style tagged address.  keyword is
           a required keyword string.

        -s <address>
        --sender <address>
           Generate a sender-style tagged address.  address is
           a required sender e-mail address.

        -d [timeout]
        --dated [timeout]
           Generate a dated-style tagged address.  timeout is an
           optional timeout interval to override your default.

Notice that -s flag.

generic@froody:~> tmda-address -s smartfriend@elsewhere.com

generic+sender+14faa1@rupture.net

generic@froody:~> 

generic+sender+14faa1@rupture.net can ONLY BE USED by smartfriend@elsewhere.com as the sender. This only works for subscriptions if you know the From: address every time. It can also work well for other purposes that your clever minds will figure out.

To set up a tagged address, add something like this to your outgoing filter:

to list@example.org tag
  envelope explicit=generic@rupture.net
  from dated
  # dated from, envelope is the address I subscribed as

Many mailing lists verify that posts are made by subscribed addresses. You can set the envelope sender to the address you subscribed with, then make the messages from a dated address. This allows the message to get through and people to respond to you (within the timeout period). Different mailing list software packages handle this sort of thing in different ways, so you might need to experiment. You can also check the TMDA FAQ for more info on this subject.

It generally makes sense to use keyword addresses for websites and sender addresses (or even your bare address) for mailing lists. Play with it.

Consult ~/.tmda/filters/outgoing for more ideas. Congratulations on getting through this documentation. Feel free to email the admin with any questions.