edpin2000

That's a clever idea. We implemented it now. One-sender and Prefix inboxes now allow you to manually add up to 5 whitelisted senders. The only friction is that you need to know their contact information (domain names at least) before you whitelist. One option we've been investigating is auto-accepting some senders for some time and allowing you to confirm them. Thanks for the suggestion.

It was by design, as an experiment. But since enough people complained about it, it's now enabled again. Thanks for bringing it up.

Yeah, that is a good point. We all hate spam, but not receiving something might be worse. We do offer "permanent" inboxes, so that's the easy solution. But if no one will use one-sender or prefix, then that defeats the purpose. Something to think about. In the initial design I had something like that, a list of "blocked" emails. But that just adds more work for people to do...

Interesting. Thanks for the suggestion. I was thinking some whois heuristics could do too, but there are so many corner cases.

Yes it does. DMARC/SPF/DKIM and spam checking.

You mean, when the same sender changes domains? This is rare, but I'm thinking about allowing the lock to reset, if one chooses to.

Ah, but Clova handles that. It locks to the domain, not the sender or the subdomain. So both your examples would still be allowed (citi.com and bankofamerica.com). There are also permanent inboxes in the system, which allow anyone. The trick is to delete them after a while when they get polluted with spam.

True. it works well. I found the interface a bit lacking but they can always improve. The free tier is limited to a few days or weeks and then it's paid. If you're a low needs customer, having a permanent free tier is nice.

If your current email is on your own domain, you can! Just a DNS change and a few configuration steps and all new messages land in your new inbox. If you have something like gmail or outlook, then you can still do it with a simple configuration change there to forward emails. On gmail I know you can create filters (rules) to forward to different inboxes even, so current subscriptions could land in different Clova inboxes. Email me at support at clova dot email and I'll guide you through some options.

It doesn't right now. I'm thinking about options and so far all seem either "too much work" for the user. A few options:

1) a button to release the lock and allow the next sender to lock it again (only works for renames like you mention, facebook.com -> meta.com but not for apple.com and icloud.com sending together).

2) A button to manually add related domains. This is too much work because users can't guess new domains easily. I had betterstack.com email me as that and also as betterstackhq.com.

3) Allow up to 3-5 domains and let users block them manually. I feel this option is what permanent inboxes are for -- Clova already has an option to block entire senders (the whole domain or just a user).

4) Plugin some logic or AI in the backend to help categorize things together and understand that betterstack.com and betterstackhq.com are the same thing, apple.com, icloud.com etc are related, etc.

Anything else?

Agents can create new inboxes and inboxes can be of 3 types, besides "Permanent" which is just a regular inbox. The other types don't have "rules" that you can customize. Instead the rules are baked-in: Temporary -> expires after some time, One-sender: allows only one sender (the first one to prove its email identity), Prefix: similar to one-sender but creates a new inbox for every suffix (and if spammers catch on to the prefix, you can delete it and create a new one).

That's been my experience too. That's why prefix inboxes allow any suffix, including "-", "_", "$", "!" etc.

Exactly. Even bots can strip the "+" and bombard you with junk. With a prefix inbox you can invent any suffix. I have a "service" prefix that I add suffixes to it when I need: "service-netflix", "service$bank", "service.newsletter-1". I don't need to pre-create each one, only "service" is enough and then any suffix locks to the sender. They can't sell your email. And they may never know to invent a new suffix because they don't know where the prefix starts. You can make it "sdfawetr" if you want.

It aims to be simpler. It's not a mask. It has forwarding as an option but the idea is that you can use one of the inbox types for different needs. The one I use the most is prefix, because you create it once and then you can tack on any suffix to it. When the first sender reaches you, that suffix become locked to their domain (or account, if it's a gmail, outlook, yahoo, etc). That seems pretty useful for subscriptions. For one-time codes, just create a temporary one every so often. It has the option to delete itself (and optionally take the email with it).

On the "+" sign comment: I find that many spammers already know the trick. That's why I built a prefix where any suffix will work. If you have "turtle" as a prefix, you can add "turtle$bank", "turtle-barber", etc on the spot, without having to create each suffix.

As for single sender, we attach to the domain, so *.github.com would be allowed. The main problem, to be honest, is when email comes from apple.com, icloud.com, applehq.com, etc. I'm considering a power-feature where you could pre-select a few domains or allow all and then lock it. I feel it would be best for power users only. What do you think?

True. I find setting up rules and adding to contacts adds work to my day-to-day though. I'm hoping to make something simple and seamless. Prefix inboxes are as simple as I could think so far: make one up, add a suffix on the spot when you handout an email address -- boom, locked to the first one who uses it.

I hope so too. I hope I have the right set of features so far. Happy to hear thoughts and early feedback.

That's so true. Gmail used to be cool, now it's old and clunky and their "unsubscribe" feature does not do that reliably. I want to tackle that next, look at domains that continue to email people after they unsubscribe.

Glad to know it's working for you!

Yes! And it can bounce/block any sender and entire domains too (across all your inboxes, if you choose).