What a forwarder should refuse to carry
10 July 2026 · 4 min read
A forwarder passing everything through sounds principled until it forwards a Windows executable into a mailbox that trusted the address you gave it.
The line we draw
- Executable attachments are held back, not forwarded.
- Loops are detected and stopped rather than amplified.
- Automatic replies are not forwarded onward.
- Everything else passes through byte for byte.
The owner can always see what was held and why. The point is not to filter opinionated categories of mail, it is to refuse to be the delivery mechanism for the few things that are dangerous by format.
More on privacy
Most disposable email is not private at all
On many throwaway-mail sites, anyone who types your address can read your inbox. That is not a bug in those products, it is how they are built.
What a masked email alias actually does
An alias is not a second mailbox. It is a valve on your real one, and understanding the difference tells you when it helps and when it does not.
Plus addressing: useful, and easier to strip than you think
you+shop@gmail.com is a fine way to label mail and a poor way to hide anything.