LazyWeb: Incoming mail with > n "To:" recipients?
Submitted by Merlin on June 5, 2006 - 12:27am.
Related to “Thanks. No.” and email filtering, I wonder how hard it would be for Mail.app, etc. to have a rule by which messages with more than n recipients in the “To:” line could be flagged for (depending on your preferences and courage) filtering, auto-archiving, or deletion. Maybe via AppleScript?
I’ve heard from several friends who filter all non-work email for which they aren’t the exclusive “To:” recipient, but it would be handy to have some flexibility in what your own magic number is – plus of course what you’d then do with emails that exceed your limit would be up to you.
But in an edge case, for example, if I get an email that went to [>=90 TO: recipients] and [<=25%] of the recipients were in my Address Book, the message would be flagged as “possible friend spam.” (And, yes, I was once on a “Hey, this is funny” list that went to 96 people multiple times each day. Good times.)
So, any thoughts? Bonus points if it’s a rule that’s easy for non-geeks to recreate in GUI apps like Mail.app, Entourage, and Outlook, etc. Comments open for brainstorming.
(In related news, as I mentioned on MM.com, I’ll soon be opening a thread on the Board to take suggestions on improving Thanks. No., so keep your powder dry on that one.)
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Two thoughts: 1) Just because recipients...
Two thoughts:
1) Just because recipients are in bcc: doesn’t mean they’re invisible to a script necessarily - different implementations vary - plus, an e-mail client or server could compute ‘n’ and put it in an X-header; won’t solve your problem right now but it’s a possible suggestion for future e-mail developers.
2) This sounds like e-mail needs “plug-ins” on the input side of things. I don’t know about Mail.app, not being a Mac person, but I know it would be useful on other platforms I use. Filters are close, but don’t provide enough kinds of logic.