4 ms·

I never had an LinkedIn account and I get a suspicious amount of LinkedIn emails. The often are very creepy. One asked me to connect with my boss from a decade

I never had an LinkedIn account and I get a suspicious amount of LinkedIn emails. The often are very creepy. One asked me to connect with my boss from a decade ago. Keep in mind, I've never had a LinkedIn account. Said boss didn't know my email address then and certainly doesn't know my new email address since its changed since the last time I've seen her a decade ago. Never seen her profile before that, never even knew she had a LinkedIn.

voidz 10y ago
This is the perfect reason to use unique email addresses: they enable you to know exactly what the origin of the 'leak' is, and when you disable the address, the other addresses keep working normally.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  You forgot to mention the prefect reason not to use a unique email address, its a pain in the ass and requires effort for very, very little return.
  - eatbitseveryday 10y ago
    Unique addresses can be accomplished with aliases. Gmail allows <username>+label[+morewords]@gmail.com where + is ignored by Gmail servers when matching, and 'label' can be defined by you. This keeps emails routing to the same account, but allows you to filter.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      And? I am aware of that, my point stands "its a pain in the ass and requires effort for very, very little return." Good luck finding services that accept a + in the email address and this is so common you aren't fooling anyone, it takes just a couple lines of code to strip pluses out of gmail addresses to get the "real" address if you are a spammer.
      - Retric 10y ago
        Just route all emails without the + to the trash.
        nommm-nommm 10y ago
        And for the services that don't accept email addresses with pluses...? And your friends/family/boss? They get unique pluses too? What about spammers who are smart enough to not remove but change the plus to random garbage before they send emails? Getting creepy LinkedIn spam is such a non-issue it isn't worth exerting even a moderate amount of effort.
        FireBeyond 10y ago
        firstname@lastname.com - works variation-on-first-name+servicename@lastname.com - works variation-on-first-name@lastname.com - black hole. Give friends #1. Give services #2.
        Retric 10y ago
        Linked in gets your email from your friends. So, they are the the source of these leaks.
      - morninj 10y ago
        Better: run your own domain with a catch-all address, so you can sign up with something like linkedin@domain.org. Everything gets routed to the primary address. Pretty easy to set up with Google Apps or Zoho.
      - D-Coder 10y ago
        Panix.com allows email addresses of the form whatever@username.users.panix.com ("username" = your usual email address). It's not at all a pain in the ass, I just type it in, it makes a lot of filtering trivial, and I don't think any spammers have munged it. (And if they do... I get spam, which I do anyway.) (Happy panix.com user.)
      - eatbitseveryday 10y ago

voidz 10y ago

This is the perfect reason to use unique email addresses: they enable you to know exactly what the origin of the 'leak' is, and when you disable the address, the other addresses keep working normally.

nommm-nommm 10y ago
You forgot to mention the prefect reason not to use a unique email address, its a pain in the ass and requires effort for very, very little return.
- eatbitseveryday 10y ago
  Unique addresses can be accomplished with aliases. Gmail allows <username>+label[+morewords]@gmail.com where + is ignored by Gmail servers when matching, and 'label' can be defined by you. This keeps emails routing to the same account, but allows you to filter.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    And? I am aware of that, my point stands "its a pain in the ass and requires effort for very, very little return." Good luck finding services that accept a + in the email address and this is so common you aren't fooling anyone, it takes just a couple lines of code to strip pluses out of gmail addresses to get the "real" address if you are a spammer.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Just route all emails without the + to the trash.
      - nommm-nommm 10y ago
        And for the services that don't accept email addresses with pluses...? And your friends/family/boss? They get unique pluses too? What about spammers who are smart enough to not remove but change the plus to random garbage before they send emails? Getting creepy LinkedIn spam is such a non-issue it isn't worth exerting even a moderate amount of effort.
        FireBeyond 10y ago
        firstname@lastname.com - works variation-on-first-name+servicename@lastname.com - works variation-on-first-name@lastname.com - black hole. Give friends #1. Give services #2.
        Retric 10y ago
        Linked in gets your email from your friends. So, they are the the source of these leaks.
    - morninj 10y ago
      Better: run your own domain with a catch-all address, so you can sign up with something like linkedin@domain.org. Everything gets routed to the primary address. Pretty easy to set up with Google Apps or Zoho.
    - D-Coder 10y ago
      Panix.com allows email addresses of the form whatever@username.users.panix.com ("username" = your usual email address). It's not at all a pain in the ass, I just type it in, it makes a lot of filtering trivial, and I don't think any spammers have munged it. (And if they do... I get spam, which I do anyway.) (Happy panix.com user.)
    - eatbitseveryday 10y ago