Contact

To contact us, please visit:
https://e4ward.freshdesk.com

E4ward Help

Why E4ward

E4ward keeps unwanted email out of your inbox. E4ward blocks mail based on the receiving address, which is the only element of an email that can never be spoofed, and which is under your complete control and not the sender’s - unlike the from address, sending server (IP), subject, or contents.

How it works

E4ward lets you create a different public email address for each of your contacts, called an alias. Each alias forwards to your real email address (REA). By subdividing your incoming email into multple addresses, you can simply delete any address that starts receiving spam. Meanwhile, your REA is ‘off the grid’. Even if it does become compromised, you can simply switch it out for another REA without having to notify any of your contacts, by just pointing your aliases to the new REA.

You combine an alias and an REA to form a delivery path called a ‘forward’. For example:

alias1@me.e4ward.com ==> me@myisp.com

When mail is sent to alias1@me.e4ward.com, E4ward forwards it to me@myisp.com.

Domains

Your account includes one domain ie username.e4ward.com. You can also use your own domain. So instead of

alias1@username.e4ward.com, you can use:

alias1@yourdomain.com

To add your domain, follow these steps:

  1. Add the following MX records to your DNS records at your registrar.
10 mx1.e4ward.com
10 mx2.e4ward.com
10 mx3.e4ward.com

(Do not use an IP address, or mail.e4ward.com, or e4ward.com, or combine with other mx hosts)

Each record should have the same priority.

Note, there might be a delay while your MX records propagate.

  1. Add the domain to your e4ward account.

Forwards

about forwards

No Rewrite

When incoming mail is processed, E4ward inserts a Reply-To header. This header allows masking of your REA when you reply to the email. The address in the header routes your reply back to E4ward’s servers rather than directly to your recipient. E4ward replaces your REA with the alias that your recipient wrote to, and then sends it on to your recipient. This is called “address rewriting”.

Normally you want this rewriting in order to hide your REA from your recipient. However in some cases you may wish to avoid this rewrite. For example, some mail services may reject the email if a header is changed or inserted, depending on the sender. For example, E4ward will automatically disables header rewrites for all mail sent by eBay or Paypal, to avoid the mail from being mistaken as phishing email by some email providers such as Gmail.

Or, you simply may not want the reply-to header added for your own reasons, eg you are masking your REA another way.

You can turn off the rewriting on a per-forward basis by checking the “No Rewrite” box when you add or change a forward. Be aware that by doing so, any replies you send to email sent to the forward, will reveal your REA (as configured in your mail client) to your recipient, unless you take other measures.

FAQ

What is a forward?

A forward is simply a pair of email addresses: an alias and your real email address (REA). You can create a unique forward for each of your contacts. There is also a catchall forward to define what happens with incoming mail which doesn’t match any of your existing forwards.

What do aliases look like?

alias1@you.e4ward.com

where ‘you’ is your E4ward account name. An alias is an address to which your mail is sent whereas your REA is the address from which you download your email. E4ward.com forwards email from the aliases to your REA. The secrecy of your REA is preserved while the vulnerability to spam is transferred to the alias. However, it is very easy to dispose of an alias (since it is not shared by all your contacts). In contrast, it is hard to stop using a public real email address because you would have to notify a lot of people. Here are some more examples.

Alias Forward to Description
amzn@myacct.e4ward.com me@myisp.com specified aliass
x7rkf3jdj@myacct.e4ward.com me@myisp.com generated alias
f7xnqr9y@myacct.e4ward.com me2@myisp.com 2nd REA
list3@mydomain.com mylists@myisp.com Using your domain
f7ra3t2x@mydomain.com *bounce Set forward to bounce mail sent to it (550 to sending MTA
xyz@mydomain.com *primary address special value ‘*primary address’, allow switching REA in bulk
*any@mydomain *primary address *any forward specifies how to handle mail if there is no other matching alias

Do I need to set up an account in my mail client for each alias?

No. You can use a single from-address (eg one account in Outlook) for all your outgoing mail. E4ward will automatically change the from-address header from the one specified in your email client to one of your aliases. See Sending email from an alias

What if my email address is already receiving spam?

If your real email address is already receiving spam, E4ward.com cannot stop that spam since it will bypass the E4ward.com servers. Unfortunately, once an email address ends up in spam lists, it is permanently compromised. In this case the best approach is to create a new mailbox email address.

This may be painful, like changing telephone numbers, but you only have to do it once, and then you will always be able to keep the new address 100% spam free. Even if your new email address somehow becomes compromised, you can easily replace it since none of your legitimate contacts have it anyway.-

Can I see who spammed me?

By using a unique forward for each contact, you know that contact is responsible if you get spam on that alias.

E4ward.com vs. challenge/response (C/R) systems?

Does E4ward.com ever generate any spam (aka collateral damage)? Will my contacts ever have to “jump through hoops” to reach me?

There are several drawbacks to challenge/response systems. One is that it forces your contacts to “jump through hoops” by responding to a confirmation email. Some users find this annoying.

A second problem is that spammers forge from-addresses. So most confirmations are sent to innocent third parties instead of the spammer. This is called “collateral damage” and many consider this to be another form of spam. e4ward.com never generates this kind of additional spam.

Tell me about random aliases?

With e4ward.com you can use random aliases or aliases of your choosing. To generate a random alias on the forward page, just click the @ (at-sign). Random aliases have the advantage of being harder for spammers to guess. It also makes it harder for you to guess what that alias is for. However e4ward.com allows you to define descriptive labels for your forwards. You can use a combination of random and meaningful alias names.

What is the *any/*catchall forward?

When processing an incoming mail, E4ward tries to locate a forward in your account which matches the alias and the domain in the email (eg accountname.e4ward.com or yourdomain.com). If there is no such forward, then E4ward locates the forward with alias ‘*any’ and the domain. This is called the catchall forward. As with any other forward, the catchall forward can specify an REA or *bounce. By setting your catchall to bounce, no mail will get through unless it is sent to an alias you specifically added.

What does *bounce mean?

*bounce is a special value that can be specified instead of an REA. It means that that rather than forward a mail sent to one of your aliases to your REA, the mail should be bounced, meaning it will appear to the sender that the alias does not exist (Technically, the sending mail server receives the error ‘550 User unknown’)

Why not just delete an alias instead of setting it to bounce?

The alias would be required to bounce if your catchall was set to forward. Or, you might want to keep track of what you are bouncing or be able to set the alias to forward in the future without having to re-add the alias.

Can I have multiple real addresses (REA”s)?

Yes, you can define multiple mailboxes as the target of forwards. As one example, you might forward all email coming from mailing lists into one mailbox.

Sending email from an alias

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