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>If you need more, the "free" (trade for your email) Just a note that Google lets you get a new email address that isn't spammable, through security through ob
by logicallee 9y ago
>If you need more, the "free" (trade for your email)
Just a note that Google lets you get a new email address that isn't spammable, through security through obscurity:
-> You can use your gmail address, add a + after it, and add a keyword. So if you are jsmith@gmail.com you can give out jsmith+syncfusionpdfsuccintly@gmail.com and then later if that starts getting spammed you can redirect it.
NOTE:
This is an incorrect solution (Google, please fix this) because anyone can run a regex removing the + part.
Instead the correct solution is that if you have gmail open, in a single click you should be able to generate a high-entropy gmail address (that does not deplete the namespace) and link it on your end with "syncfusionpdfsuccintly".
If I already have gmail open, 7 seconds to create a new gmail address as follows:
1. Click something to start the process
2. Type "syncfusionpdfsuccintly" to tag it on my end
3. Click something to copy a resulting high-entropy gmail name into the clipboard.
I should then be able to paste it into a form, get it delivered straight into my inbox (never spam), and redirect it to spam if it starts getting spammed.
This would allow people to contact us without ever getting into spam, while entirely removing their ability to contact us if this email address starts getting spammed. There are no downsides.
I believe Google's engineers are smart enough to move from security through obscurity (relying on the knowledge that no spammer can ever invent and run the exact regex s/\+[.]+@/@/g to remove the security through obscurity, as this would entirely break this security, exposing the underlying "protected" email addresses) to something that works.
Until that day comes you can rely on the security through obscurity to give out a secure email address that can't be spammed. Just add a + and a tag!
Please.
Google: I believe you are smart enough to understand this comment and implement this solution, which can be prototyped in 30 minutes and solves the spam problem forever. You can do it! I believe in you. You're 99.999% there and your security through obscurity works very well for me. I use it.
I hope you will go above and beyond and solve the remaining 0.001%. It would just make me feel better to know that a 13-character regex couldn't defeat your solution.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- apostacy 9y agoI wrote something in node.js that does exactly this. But I have only used it for personal use. I'm honestly surprised that nobody has done this already. Right now it just silently drops expired addresses. But it is so satisfying to think about bouncing (but stuff like bouncing behavior is something you have to consider when running a mail service). I was thinking of turning it into a service, but I'd have to read up on how to scale it. Running an SMTP server takes a lot of care. I've found that just using nearlyfreespeech.net's mail forwarding is most reliable to receive emails. So I do that for now, since it is on a small scale. I just got so frustrated with how this problem has such an obvious technical solution. At least for us users, anyway. It's not a solution for the marketers. I strongly suspect that Google is very reluctant to do anything to make the email landscape unstable. I think that if Google started offering this, it would shake up so much of their business.
- apostacy 9y agoActually, I'm gonna try https://grr.la/ryo/ https://grr.la/ryo/
- kilburn 9y agoBouncing email doesn't make much sense if you can reject easily (which would be your case). Running an inbound SMTP server is much easier than running outbound smtp for laypeople. The software (postfix, exim, etc.) is rock solid (you have to REALLY mess up to lose emails) and the protocol is very forgiving (all serious senders have good retry policies). I encourage you to try!
- logicallee 9y agoAs I mentioned, Google already offers this. Just add a tag with + to your existing gmail address and you instantly create a tagged new one.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ant6n 9y agoExcept as pointed out, a spammer (etc) can remove the tag and get the original address using a regex.
- squarefoot 9y ago> Instead the correct solution is that if you have gmail open, in a single click you should be able to generate a high-entropy gmail address (that does not deplete the namespace) and link it on your end with "syncfusionpdfsuccintly". This a reasonably priced paid service that does already exist, it's not from Google and no, I won't name it neither publicly nor privately because I used it for years and I don't want their domain to be banned by those requiring your email address for everything. If you know how to search you will probably find it. Basically you sign with them using one valid email address, then on their interface you can create as many addresses as you need (IIRC there is a limit but I used even dozens at a time without problems) and add a keyword to them. All of those addresses will be redirected to the email you signed with, but the From: field will also contain the keyword you specified so that if you create an address for each service you sign up for, you instantly recognize who is spamming you when they use that address. This is very effective and I filtered out a lot of spammers. I'm surprised there are no more services like this one around, or probably there are many but they keep a low profile to avoid being banned. That's why I'm not going to name that service, sorry. But it does exist indeed and is technically easy to implement.
- logicallee 9y agoyou're afraid of naming the service but if Google implemented my suggestion they could never be blacklisted. (Unless their high-entropy email tags followed some easily identified pattern.) I'm not asking for the service to "exist". I'm asking Google to take twenty minutes and fix their solution, which already works but is security through obscurity.
- vgb2k11 9y ago> if Google implemented my suggestion they could never be blacklisted Google seems to have built their brand intentionally to be the opposite of what you're asking for though; and absolutely they could be blacklisted with a simple "GMAIL ADDRESSES NO LONGER ACCEPTED HERE". >which already works but is security through obscurity. I'm not sure which one you are saying is security through obscurity here... blah+real.id@gmail.com... or the high entropy mkKAjgsdf788hf87hf@gmail.com, both are obscure, but its a stretch of imagination to start labelling this a security issue.
- eru 9y agoGoogle mostly solves this with spam filters instead.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoCouldn't you do something like: 1. Register foo@gmail.com 2. Give out your email address to friends and family as foo+bar@gmail.com 3. Give out your email address to services as foo+{service name}@gmail.com 4. Reject anything coming directly to foo@gmail.com
- desdiv 9y agoMany spammers have caught onto the foo+bar trick. When they detect such an address they will spam both foo+bar@gmail.com and foo@gmail.com.
- kgwgk 9y agoRead his message carefully. They don't know about foo+bar@gmail.com
- logicallee 9y agoThat is a different kind of obscurity, as if that were my protocol a spammer could make up a keyword and it would be delivered until I realized that it wasn't myself who made it up. Maybe there is a way to whitelist keywords and only deliver tags I add one at a time via filters, but it is not the usual interface.