6 ms·

No no, you don't need aliases for that. You can set up a catch-all at something like service@spam.yourdomain.com and have as many of those as you like, no 500 l

No no, you don't need aliases for that. You can set up a catch-all at something like service@spam.yourdomain.com and have as many of those as you like, no 500 limit.

danShumway 7y ago
You're missing two important points. First (and most importantly), Fastmail aliases don't need to be linked to my domain. If the goal of this is to not have my identity/addresses tracked across services, it is important that I not have a single, unique identifier shared between those emails. If I sign up for Walmart with `walmart@danshumway.com`, I haven't gained any privacy. If I sign up with `walmart@fastmail.com`, I've gained a great deal of privacy. Second, another use for Fastmail aliases is filtering -- the fact that they're not catch-alls. If I use a catch-all, an abuser can still fill up my email box by sending to unfiltered catch-all addresses. However, most emails you send to `@danshumway.com` will bounce, because I explicitly don't have a catch-all set up. I could add a bunch of custom filters into Gmail to auto-delete emails that didn't go into a specific address, but I'd basically be re-inventing the wheel for no benefit. With Fastmail, I can easily modify, remove, or add a new alias in less than a minute, and I can have my aliases split between as many custom domains as I want. This is all stuff that Gmail handles very poorly. Even setting up custom domains at all is annoying in Gmail if you're not paying for GSuite. And of course, Fastmail aliases can also contain catch-alls and wildcard operators, which means you get the best of both worlds. You can set up a wildcard alias for your domain that forwards everything like you describe, and that only counts as one alias.
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  > If I sign up for Walmart with `walmart@danshumway.com`, I haven't gained any privacy. If I sign up with `walmart@fastmail.com`, I've gained a great deal of privacy. Depends on your thread model imo. Is it obvious to a human that "@danshumway.com" points to you? Yeah. Has anyone at walmart done the work to teach the computer about this? Probably not.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    I suspect you're correct right now, but people used to say the same thing about Gmail `+` addresses, and I believe some marketers have gotten smart enough to strip those. Putting together a regex expression to strip out the domain and check to see if it's unique across a shared database of email addresses would be really easy, so I wouldn't count on this being ignored forever. I'm a pretty boring person, so aside from general paranoia around keeping infrastructure secret I'm not particularly concerned with anyone finding out what accounts I have online. But, depending on your situation, it might also be prudent to include database leaks in that threat model as well, which are likely going to be searched through by actual humans.
    - masukomi 7y ago
      to be clear "+" addresses aren't a Gmail thing. they work on all mail servers. they're part of the spec for how you define an email address. Any server that doesn't support them is, by definition, broken. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html
      - eitland 7y ago
        > they work on all mail servers. Wrong AFAIK. Unless certain mail providers have been patched recently without me noticing. > they're part of the spec for how you define an email address. Any server that doesn't support them is, by definition, broken. Might very well be true, I haven't checked. In that case I guess a number of people get their mail from broken mail servers so they have to deal with it anyway.

No no, you don't need aliases for that. You can set up a catch-all at something like service@spam.yourdomain.com and have as many of those as you like, no 500 limit.

danShumway 7y ago

You're missing two important points. First (and most importantly), Fastmail aliases don't need to be linked to my domain. If the goal of this is to not have my identity/addresses tracked across services, it is important that I not have a single, unique identifier shared between those emails. If I sign up for Walmart with `walmart@danshumway.com`, I haven't gained any privacy. If I sign up with `walmart@fastmail.com`, I've gained a great deal of privacy. Second, another use for Fastmail aliases is filtering -- the fact that they're not catch-alls. If I use a catch-all, an abuser can still fill up my email box by sending to unfiltered catch-all addresses. However, most emails you send to `@danshumway.com` will bounce, because I explicitly don't have a catch-all set up. I could add a bunch of custom filters into Gmail to auto-delete emails that didn't go into a specific address, but I'd basically be re-inventing the wheel for no benefit. With Fastmail, I can easily modify, remove, or add a new alias in less than a minute, and I can have my aliases split between as many custom domains as I want. This is all stuff that Gmail handles very poorly. Even setting up custom domains at all is annoying in Gmail if you're not paying for GSuite. And of course, Fastmail aliases can also contain catch-alls and wildcard operators, which means you get the best of both worlds. You can set up a wildcard alias for your domain that forwards everything like you describe, and that only counts as one alias.

Skunkleton 7y ago
> If I sign up for Walmart with `walmart@danshumway.com`, I haven't gained any privacy. If I sign up with `walmart@fastmail.com`, I've gained a great deal of privacy. Depends on your thread model imo. Is it obvious to a human that "@danshumway.com" points to you? Yeah. Has anyone at walmart done the work to teach the computer about this? Probably not.
- danShumway 7y ago
  I suspect you're correct right now, but people used to say the same thing about Gmail `+` addresses, and I believe some marketers have gotten smart enough to strip those. Putting together a regex expression to strip out the domain and check to see if it's unique across a shared database of email addresses would be really easy, so I wouldn't count on this being ignored forever. I'm a pretty boring person, so aside from general paranoia around keeping infrastructure secret I'm not particularly concerned with anyone finding out what accounts I have online. But, depending on your situation, it might also be prudent to include database leaks in that threat model as well, which are likely going to be searched through by actual humans.
  - masukomi 7y ago
    to be clear "+" addresses aren't a Gmail thing. they work on all mail servers. they're part of the spec for how you define an email address. Any server that doesn't support them is, by definition, broken. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html
    - eitland 7y ago
      > they work on all mail servers. Wrong AFAIK. Unless certain mail providers have been patched recently without me noticing. > they're part of the spec for how you define an email address. Any server that doesn't support them is, by definition, broken. Might very well be true, I haven't checked. In that case I guess a number of people get their mail from broken mail servers so they have to deal with it anyway.