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I do something very similar to avoid giving my email to companies I receive wildcard@wildcard.domain in a single mailbox and when I register in a service I use
by jdmoreira 8y ago
I do something very similar to avoid giving my email to companies
I receive wildcard@wildcard.domain in a single mailbox and when I register in a service I use something like
facebook@social.domain,
stripe@service.domain
This makes it trivial to see who is leaking my email addresses and also allows me to tag the emails
- rubenbe 8y agoI have the same pattern but added a 6 character hexadecimal postfix based on a hash. facebook-com-a2bdc0@domain.com This makes it less trivial to guess the other domains. (although you could bruteforce the entire range)
- tmacam 8y agoI wish I could do something as sophisticated as this with GSuite. I did manage to get something similar in spirit but waaay simpler using GSuite filtering+routing and regexes.
- goddva 8y agoBut you can, sort of. If your GSuite mail is user@domain.com, you could use user+facebook@domain.com. Then you can create what ever filtering you want to GSuite. The problem I have, is to remember what I used for each service :/ . So I really liked the idea of `whichmail`.
- techntoke 8y agoA lot of services won't accept an email with a plus sign as a valid email address. Part of the issue is how many companies want an email address to sign up for something. It is much easier to track your accounts using a password management application, as opposed to giving everyone your email address and phone number.
- pstch 8y agoI have even seen emails rejected when using a simple dash, or because it was not hosted by a well-known mail service provider, and even because "your email should be of the form <name>.<surname>@<website>" (yes, with a dot, ironically). At that point I gave up, and I use a single Gmail account for all the services that I don't use very frequently (also because it's not always easy to send mail from self-hosted mailservers, some destinations simply refuse any mail that is not from Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail).
- tmacam 8y agoAs the other comments mention, I avoid the + sign on a e-mail - way too many systems (from form validators to other systems) freak out with dashes, dots and plus signs in e-mails. The format I have settled is somewhat like prefixFixedSizeSuffix@domain, both prefix and suffix being plain alphanumeric characters. Yes, the suffix is rather dumb (it could be a smarter like a hash when I used procmail) but still better than a catchall with no filtering. I could have opted to a whitelist. Not sure how automatable GSuite services are (I guess a bit) but this simple regex allows me to just come up with email address on demand with with minimal fuzz.
- notaboutdave 8y agoThis seems like it might be frustrating to manage. Instead of one or two memorable addresses, you now have two hundred hard-to-memorize ones. It also might get awkward at the cash register :)
- lytedev 8y agoHow often do you give your email at a cash register?
- rubenbe 8y agoIt's sometimes a bit of a hassle, but I have to python script that generates and configures it for me. And in some cases I fallback to <bricks-and-mortar-shop>@domain.com Because that's much easier to spell out to a cashier. After it's configured, my password manager stores the email too so that's not a problem
- liuw 8y agoCan you reply from the aliases? If you're using a service provider, can you share which one you use?
- techsupporter 8y agoI use Fastmail and, yes, you can reply from the aliases, including anything-you-want catch-alls. Unlike the grandparent, I use a subdomain because setting star@example.com as a catch-all seems to invite staggering amount of spam. I set star@hi.example.com as a catch-all and then have a rule that, unless otherwise categorized elsewhere, anything sent to star@hi.example.com is automatically filed into a "Catch-All" folder. With Fastmail, I can set a reply address that matches any of my aliases and * (star) works as expected, it matches anything, so I can just create a sending identity in Thunderbird as, say, mybank@hi.example.com without having to go into Fastmail's control panel and do anything else.
- Torgo 8y agoI do this on my home email server via Thunderbird. There is a plugin here: https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id that lets you put in an arbitrary from address (as long as your server will accept it.)
- garaetjjte 8y agoThere is no plugin required, you can do that now in Thunderbird without any modifications.
- gylterud 8y agonewmail has a sister command, whichmail, which looks up which email was generated for a specific domain. For instance: $ newmail facebook.com qesruftug@example.com Then later: $ whichmail facebook.com qesruftug@example.com