anonymous and confidential app design

Question

I presently have two twin apps, TellMeStraight and SuggestionDrop which work but with a small flaw about which this question is directed. The two apps are identical except that some of the wording of TellMeStraight is oriented to a communication with an individual and the wording of SuggestionDrop is directed to communication with a company/organization. The purpose of both apps is to allow an (A) individual or company/organization to engage in confidential/anonymous conversations with their (B) students/clients/customers/members/etc.

Here is the problem. While communications from A to B and from B to A are made via a completely anonymous web link, the (email) communications from B to A appear to come from me, not from A, and that can seem disorienting to A in using this system. The problem is that gae only allows emails to be sent from the app owner, not the app user. You can somewhat tell the problem from the commented out line in the code below; I got system errors when I tried to use the commented out line. (Btw, I have altered my own email address below for security.)

class SendMessage(webapp.RequestHandler):
    def post(self):
        ID_id = self.request.get('ID')
        handle = self.request.get('handle')
        handle = ''.join(handle.split())
        comment = self.request.get('comment')
        key = db.Key.from_path("Person", ID_id)
        person = Person.get(key)
        user_address = person.address
        #sender_address = person.address
        sender_address = 'example@mail.com'
        subject = person.title

So my question is, do you have any suggestions about how this app could be re-designed to continue to use gae but to remove this problem? (For example, could google "documents" be used or could my return email address be omitted somehow?)

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 22 '12 at 04:34

1

The Sending Mail docs state:

The sender can also be the Google Account email address of the current user who is signed in, if the user's account is a Gmail account or is on a domain managed by Google Apps.

So you can send email under user's email address, if user logged in via Google Account system. Afaik, this does not work if you use federated login (OpenID).

answered Oct 22 '12 at 04:34

Peter Knego

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The ultimate user in these apps does not use his/her google account even if s/he has one, because of the anonymity aspect. So I don't think this will work. – zerowords Oct 22 '12 at 18:05

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 22 '12 at 12:22

1

Another option is to send emails from the app's own email addresses. Any address anything@appid.appspotmail.com (where appid is your app's app ID) is a valid email address for your app, which you can both send and receive mail on.

answered Oct 22 '12 at 12:22

Nick Johnson

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anonymous and confidential app design

2 Answers2