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Slightly off topic. As someone who values privacy a lot and doesn't give out phone numbers much at all, I prefer other ways to communicate with service provider
by newscracker 9y ago
Slightly off topic. As someone who values privacy a lot and doesn't give out phone numbers much at all, I prefer other ways to communicate with service providers where the user identifier is easier to switch/change (changing one's phone number is a lot more tedious than changing email addresses because many people, at least from the last two decades, have the habit of using multiple email addresses segregated by usage but have just one phone number).
- Sleeep 9y agoIt's slow but pretty much all banks have a "secure messaging" system on their website. I don't know about airlines though.
- samstave 9y agoYears ago I started crating email aliases on my mail server for various things. I would typically make an email alias for a company that was [company-name]@my-domain.com and use that as my contact email for correspondence with said company. So, I was doing something with the DMV online - and I created the alias "dmv@my-domain.com" to communicate with them via... They sent their lawyers after me and sent me cease and desist letters telling me that my use of dmv@ was a violation of their copyright and that I would "confuse users" I tried to explain to the DMV (yes dept of motor vehicles) how ridiculous this whole thing was and that the email address was for their use only - and that as a state agency, they don't have a consumer brand and that anyone with the initials of DMV, like David Michael Vincent would be using DMV in their emails etc... They persisted and were annoying enough I just deleted their alias...
- xkcd-sucks 9y agoHow do they deal with the 50ish other DMVs?
- toast0 9y agoA lot of other similar state agencies have different names, DOT is popular, I've also seen MVD. DMV procedures are a great illustrator of bubbles; a lot of things vary wildly (for example, what happens to sequential plates when a vehicle is sold), but most people don't realize there could even be a different procedure, or if they do, they think most states do it the same way they do.
- criddell 9y agoThat's when you change the alias to the DMV lawyer's name.
- samstave 9y agoOh dear lord that would have been genius!!!
- oostevo 9y agoI do the same thing - I make an email alias for nearly every organization that I do business with. It was surprisingly easy to set up with GSuite. This has the side benefit of making it obvious who's responsible for selling my email address and makes it easy to ameliorate being signed up for unsolicited email lists by burning the email address. (A popular tech journalism outfit has been the worst offender in recent years.)