Any SMTP email providers which allow for a low volume of legitimate 'spoofed' email?

March 11, 2011 12:59 PM

Are there any low-volume SMTP email relay services which allow the sending of 'spoofed' emails for valid site purposes (like a 'forward to a friend' feature)?

The site I just inherited is now hosted on AWS' EC2, which is understandably strict about outgoing SMTP traffic. However, even their add-on email service requires verification of any "from" address used in an email. The site's "forward to a friend" feature sends spoofed emails through a website form, so when the recipient replies to the message, it goes to the address that the forwarder gave to the web form. I figure my options are:

1. Find a less-restrictive SMTP provider that allows for a low volume (a few dozen a day) of legitimate spoofed emails.

2. Re-implement the feature using a static site-specific address ([e-mail]).

posted by cowbellemoo to computers & internet (6 answers total)

This is trivial to do with your own mail server. The problem is once you do this you pretty much are guaranteeing your email will end up in the spam filter or outright filtered. You pretty much need to do through option number 2.
posted by damn dirty ape at 1:10 PM on March 11, 2011

Can you send the email from your address and use a Reply-To header?
posted by indyz at 1:10 PM on March 11, 2011

It's unclear why you can't validate the From address. This is a good idea for several reasons, like compliance with the CAN-SPAM act.
posted by odinsdream at 1:17 PM on March 11, 2011

The From and Reply-To header can be two different addresses.

According this thread, Amazon has removed the "verified" restriction on the Reply-To header. So, as long as you set the From to something that is verified, you should be good.

https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=59110
posted by sideshow at 1:57 PM on March 11, 2011

Oh, brilliant! I think I'll still have to shoe-horn the reply-to header into the implementation, but it'll be nice to keep the functionality the same.
posted by cowbellemoo at 2:18 PM on March 11, 2011

A few words of warning regarding using the Reply To header: I've used this in exactly this way on a site, and still had replies come to the From address, rather than the Reply To address. It turns out that lots of the emails get forwarded. Say you send something to your friend's email address, but he actually has all email coming to that address immediately forwarded to his new GMail address. When your friend hits "Reply" it will go to the original From address; the Reply To was lost in the forwarding process.
posted by juggler at 9:00 AM on March 12, 2011