Default Gravatar on wildcard email addresses unless specified

Question

I own my domain and I use different email addresses for different sites, depending on what the site does, whether I think they'll spam me, etc.

Is there a way to tell Gravatar to use a picture for *@example.com unless it's already been defined?

I realize the wildcard would need verification. Gravatar could use the contact information for the domain as a way to validate the request.

Answer 1

It's impossible. Gravatar doesn't actually operate on email addresses but MD5 hashes of them. There's no way to relate email addresses that have the same portion after the @ sign. If you send Gravatar an email that's not specifically in its database, it has no way to even tell what domain you are asking about.

This is by design to ensure we all know Gravatar isn't collecting email addresses. Otherwise, people would be reluctant to check for a Gravatar -- if the person didn't have one, you'd be giving Gravatar their email address.