This repository hosts the main application and API for the "masked emails".

To prevent SPAM, I wanted to be able to create as many single-purpose email addresses as requested.

A lot of solutions exist, to create on-the-fly disposable email addresses, such as Mailinator or 10MinuteMail but I do not want my email addresses to be disposable.

Also, free disposable email address services usually do not come with any concerns with regards to privacy or security.

I also evaluated other solutions such as MySudo, but each had drawbacks (like, only running on iOS for instance)

The solution that most closely resemble what I want is a service like Abine Blur that provides exactly the kind of features I need:

For instance, in Abine Blur, I have the following feature:

• Do not have security risks shared by other anonymous free disposable email services.
• Create as many single-purpose email addresses as required.
• Each masked email address redirects to a hidden, "real" email address, never revealed to spammers.
• Each masked address can be disabled, thus staying active but not relaying messages to the target "real" email address.
• A masked email address can be deleted altogether when no longer used.

Another service that looks similar (but that I have not evaluated) is offered by FairCustodian.

Those services look promising, and I actually used (and still use) Abine Blur. However, the key missing feature to me is the ability to send or reply to an email using one of the masked email addresses.

Because I really wanted this feature, I started to build it myself.

The "masked emails" solution revolves around three components:

1. A backend self-hosted email server. This is a real full-featured SMTP / IMAP mail server hosted on a private virtual server using my own domain.
   For this, I use the fullstack but simple mailserver implementation provided by tomav as a Docker image.

Because this is a real email server, I can fire up any mail client that I want to actually send an email from any one of the custom masked email address at any time.

For this, I use the excellent ThunderBird Portable on a USB stick that I keep with me all the time.

2. A set of PowerShell scripts and CRON jobs are used to administer the masked email addresses (CRUD) as well as periodically redirect mail messages to a "read" configurable email address.
   Messages from a disabled masked email address are periodically deleted (after a configurable delay that defaults to two days).
   Messages from an active masked email address are redirected to a target email address.

The source code for these scripts is hosted on the masked-emails-pwsh repository.

The scripts are available as a Debian package thanks to a continuous integration using AppVeyor.

3. A backend service, that runs on the Linux Virtual Private Server. This service listens on an Azure Storage Queue for commands coming from a front-end application.
   Those commands are used to disable or delete an existing masked email address’ mailbox from the mail server. Those commands are also used to create a new masked email address mailbox.

The source code for this daemon is hosted on the masked-emails-daemon repository.

The daemon is available as a Debian package thanks to a continuous integration using AppVeyor.

4. A front-end web application and API. This application is the purpose of this repository.

These are actually two distinct applications,

• one hosting the API and the Angular-based front-end.
• the other, hosting a custom IdentityServer4-based Identity Provider.

The front-end communicates with the backend daemon service using an Azure Storage queue.