Can I dynamically set up and destroy email addresses?

Okay, SoBig mostly passed me by, but Swen is clogging up one or two of my
addresses now. It's fairly trivial to set up a script that will dynamically
display a different address which changes with time:

september2003 RemoveThis @example.com
october2003 RemoveThis @example.com

and so on. But is it possible to automatically set up and destroy addresses in
this way, so that spam sent to the old addresses would just bounce? To do it
manually would be a pain. I'm wondering if this is something only a host could
set up, or could it be done as a cron job set up by a user?

--
Alice Woolley
http://www.insidethebubble.co.uk/
Inside the Bubble - autism information

Foxglove54321 wrote:

 > Okay, SoBig mostly passed me by, but Swen is clogging up one or two of my
 > addresses now. It's fairly trivial to set up a script that will dynamically
 > display a different address which changes with time:
 >
 > september2003.RemoveThis@example.com
 > october2003.RemoveThis@example.com
 >
 > and so on. But is it possible to automatically set up and destroy addresses in
 > this way, so that spam sent to the old addresses would just bounce? To do it
 > manually would be a pain. I'm wondering if this is something only a host could
 > set up, or could it be done as a cron job set up by a user?

Set up a cron job to run on the first of every month:
0 0 1 * * /root/bin/aliases-swap.php 1>/dev/null 2> /dev/null

The set up a script to handle the swapping (completely untested!):
#!/usr/local/bin/php -q
<?php
// define the location of the aliases file
$aliases_file='/etc/aliases';

if($fp=fopen($aliases_file,'rw')){
// the file is open, read it in
$contents=file($aliases_file);

// define the pattern to look for and what to replace it with
$search='/'.strtolower(date('FY',strtotime('1 month
ago'))).'.*)/';
$replace=strtolower(date('FY')).":$1";

// this will hold the resulting file
$results=array();

// backup the old file
copy($aliases_file,$aliases_file.'.old');

// replace the aliases file
foreach($contents as $i=>$line){
$results[]=preg_replace($search,$replace,$line);
}
unset($contents);

if(!fwrite($fp,join('',$results),strlen(join('',$results)))){
echo 'Monthly alias swap failed. ';
echo 'Cannot write to ',$aliases_file,"\n\n";
exit;
}
fclose($fp);
echo 'Monthly alias swap successful.',"\n\n";
echo join('',$results),"\n";
}else{
echo 'Monthly alias swap failed. ';
echo 'Cannot open ',$aliases_file,' for write.',"\n";
fclose($fp);
}
?>

Then that's all there is to it! PHP is just the language I most
frequently use, if I was to actually do this, I'd use bash or perl, but
it get's the point across.

--
Justin Koivisto - spam.RemoveThis@koivi.com
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