If you run a mac os x server, or know someone that does, you can use this method to track and control your spam. There is a bug in Workgroup Manager that makes this more difficult than it should be, which is why I am posting the instructions here since I figured out how to make it work properly.

The basic idea is very simple. You have an email address, but that is not the address you give out. There are some services on the internet you can use to do this, or you can do it yourself. This is how to do it yourelf.

With your account created on the server, you can go into workgroup manager and add aliases to your username. They can be used in place of your real short username most anywhere, including email. So if you are about to submit a ticket to bestbuy.com and you are concerned they may spam you, create an alias "virtual1bestbuy". Then they can mail you at "virtual1bestbuy@mydomain.com". If you start receiving unwanted mail to virtual1bestbuy, you just delete the alias and the spam stops. (and you know where it came from!)

Think this is unnecessary? Really? Only giving addresses to those you 'trust'? Really? Here's why I do it. I was shopping for a new truck, and was at Ford's web site. "have dealers in your area contact you". That's handy. But wait, we are paranoid. Lets have them mail "virtual1ford". So I send that request and I get five replies back from dealers in my area.

six months later I start getting spam, to virtual1ford, one per day. What I have to say about that is not fit for posting here so I will skip that part.

Now I wrote a nastygram to ford and to all five dealers that replied to me. Ford solidly denied selling me out, but I did not receive any mail from any of the dealers. In fairness they probably didn't sell me out, but more likely one of the dealers' PCs were infected with a spam virus and my address was harvested from their addressbook or previous recipients list.

So, who can you trust? No one! Even the honest people will get you spammed. Even your friends can get you spammed if they get wormed or even use a computer that has been infected to email you or read your email to them.

Anyway, you can add about 15 aliases with workgroup manager. If you add more than that, the vertical scroll bar stops working and you can't see more than the top 7 entries. You can just blindly arrow down and try to add an entry but removing them is more difficult since you can't see what you are doing. Here is my work around:

sudo niutil -readprop / /users/virtual1 "name"

That will list all aliases for user virtual1

sudo niutil -mergeprop / /users/virtual1 "name" "virtual1ford"

will add an alias "virtual1ford" to the user "virtual1". You can add the same alias twice, but then you would have to remove it twice.

sudo niutil -destroyval / /users/virtual1 "name" "virtual1ford"

That will remove the virtua1ford alias from the user virtual1

In the above examples, "virtual1" is the account to add the alias to, "virtual1ford" is the example alias to add, and "name" is not to be changed, it needs to be "name" because "name" is the name of the field we are changing.

Be careful. "sudo niutil" can cause enormous problems if you make a typeo. I had to restore my netinfo database once while writing the scripts to automate this, accidentally added an alias virtual1 to user virtual1 and needed to remove it, and ended up removing the USER virtual1 instead of just the alias.