Best way to send anonymous email like craigslist

Question

Hi,

Craigslist has a nice feature where when you respond to a poster you respond to an email such as [email protected]. The email is then in turn directed to the real email.

I am looking for a couple pointers on how to do this with PHP.

Thanks,
Levi

Answer 1

This is usually done by piping an e-mail address (often, a catch-all address) to PHP. Here's a tutorial on doing it that should get you started in the right direction.

Answer 2

The most probable solution is that they do email piping.

They insert the ad with an identifier like "job-fepsd-1120347193" alongside the real email.

Then they receive the email by piping it to a php script (check google for PHP and Piping for good resources on the subject).

The script then search for the unique identifier and associate it to a real email. It forward the email received to the real guy after.

There is also another possible solution (but less possible), they might be using POP3. The would then just cron a check each X minutes on a catch all adress and then forward the message to the right guy.