5 ms·

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, th

by 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
      > I am aware of that, my point stands "its a pain in the ass and requires effort for very, very little return." Where is this "pain in your ass"? With Gmail at least, you don't need to actually _create_ an alias before using one. When prompted to enter an email somewhere on the web, you have to type your email in, regardless, correct? In that process, append '+domain' to your username and you've just created an alias for that domain. It's very low overhead. > Good luck finding services that accept a + in the email address I haven't come across one yet. Maybe you can cite a source? I am not disagreeing, just saying maybe you can give examples to back up these vociferous claims. > strip pluses out So far, Gmail is the only service I am aware of that uses '+' in this way. Other services may not have the same method (e.g., use another character). Why would spammers actually _care_ to realize you're using a 'filter technique'? The lay person probably doesn't even know this feature exists, and spammers aren't targeting people like you, anyway.

by voidz 10y ago

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
    > I am aware of that, my point stands "its a pain in the ass and requires effort for very, very little return." Where is this "pain in your ass"? With Gmail at least, you don't need to actually _create_ an alias before using one. When prompted to enter an email somewhere on the web, you have to type your email in, regardless, correct? In that process, append '+domain' to your username and you've just created an alias for that domain. It's very low overhead. > Good luck finding services that accept a + in the email address I haven't come across one yet. Maybe you can cite a source? I am not disagreeing, just saying maybe you can give examples to back up these vociferous claims. > strip pluses out So far, Gmail is the only service I am aware of that uses '+' in this way. Other services may not have the same method (e.g., use another character). Why would spammers actually _care_ to realize you're using a 'filter technique'? The lay person probably doesn't even know this feature exists, and spammers aren't targeting people like you, anyway.