This content was published by Andrew Tomazos and written by several hundred members of the former Internet Knowledge Base project.
Disadvantages outweigh advantages (IMHO)
I think this is an example of what the anti-spam crowd call a FUSSP - Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem. The term is usually dismissive, as experience has shown that FUSSP's usually aren't final or ultimate and very often aren't a solution.
Before I get to that, I should comment that Segmail is not entirely dissimilar to the services offered by sneakemail.com and similar providers. You might like to take a look at http://www.sneakemail.com/, especially their 'auto address keys' feature. Such systems are quite easy to engineer. I'm currently building a system of my own along these lines, based on the Perl Mail::Audit module, and it seems to work well so far.
The fact that Segmail doesn't require any changes to basic Internet mail transport is a point in its favor. A lot of FUSSPs fail immediately because they require every mail server and client on the planet to be re-implemented. Another good feature is that it's largely immune to dictionary attacks.
I think that the inability to generate a Segmail address without Internet access (unless you have an address generator in your PDA, and remember to sync it with the server later) is a serious disadvantage. So too is the fact that Segmail addresses are basically non-human-readable or quotable. When I registered my first domain name, I spent quite a lot of time searching for something that was simple enough that I could tell it to people - including non-native English speakers - over the phone, and be confident that they'd be able to get it right. With Segmail, you could forget about that, just as you could forget about giving your address to the cute girl/boy you just met in a noisy nightclub.
As you say, you can't put a Segmail address on a business card or write it on your letterhead. To me, that's a significant disadvantage.
Segmail addresses aren't quotable. They're not memorable either. That's a disadvantage when I'm using my webmail client, instead of my usual Eudora, because I don't sync address books between the two. If I have to dash off a message to you, I might remember that your address is andrew at tomazos dot com, but I certainly won't be able to remember andrew dash angus dash xray-four-tangi-zero-five-niner-mike-hotel at tomazos dot com.
Segmail won't protect role accounts ('webmaster@', 'sales@' etc) from spam.
You say that getting mail to a Segmail address guarantees that the mail is from the person you gave the address to, or someone they passed it on to. Not true: what about addresses you use for mailing lists, which are then exposed on archive web pages? Those could be scraped up by anyone. Similarly, if your correspondent forwards the witty message you sent to all their friends, and all their friends send it on to all their friends, until it eventually lands up in a spammer's address list (because someone's computer got compromised, or because someone found your message so funny they had to put it on a web page), then when you start getting spam to that address, you still don't _really_ know who "leaked" the address.
I don't think I'd use Segmail, because I attach too much importance to being able to quote, write and remember email addresses, and Segmail kills all that for - in my view - relatively little gain. I think I'd rather conceal my addresses, filter them mercilessly using all the tools in the box, and use disposable email addresses (i.e. Sneakemail-style) for websites and mailing lists.
Sorry to be so critical, but I'm not convinced that Segmail is the answer. But maybe I'm missing something.
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