5 ms·

Hundreds. Having my own domains with all email coming to me lets me give arbitrary (i.e., numbered) addresses when requested, so I can track them when I want,

by lcall 7y ago

Hundreds. Having my own domains with all email coming to me lets me give arbitrary (i.e., numbered) addresses when requested, so I can track them when I want, and for example see which ones later to auto-delete, etc. Or for whatever need arises. Edit: my recollection from some time ago is that pobox.com was useful for the same thing, if one doesn't have one's own domain. I used them before I got mine. There are probably similar services. I liked their attitude and approach, at the time. (no other affiliation.) Edit again: the above plus some rules in mutt (or thunderbird maybe...), have been really helpful for me. The rules & macros could get rather complex if one wanted I suppose. (Edit: I've liked pair.com for domain/hosting for a long time: have had good prices/service, helpfulness, no silliness for many years; also no other affiliation but customer.) (Edit: that email system at my hosting provider also works well for, say, groups like various extended family subsets, so it works something like a mailing list to everyone.) Edit (sorry, I didn't answer the OPs 2nd question): For most, I use mutt (or thunderbird) to POP (download) them from my hosting provider to my own pc (so, not a business...sorry if not helping), and then do good backups. For some, as mentioned in my previous paragraph, they are auto-forwarded by the hosting provider to whomever, per rules I put in their web UI for my account. It is also possible to create many extra mailboxes (which I used to do ) so other individuals can POP (or view with IMAP) their own email to their own pc. For a business...would have to think whether we need a centralized Exchange-equivalent or if storage on multiple PCs, or IMAP (leave it on the hosting provider's server, but manage from a PC, etc) is OK in a limited situation, given the backups, storage, and specific business needs. I would probably not prefer gmail since Google already has enough centralized power (as discussed in other HN postings about Chrome vs. firefox etc).

AlchemistCamp 7y ago
Sounds exhausting and a bit of a pain for people who correspond with you. What's the point?
- lcall 7y ago
  I'm not sure how so. I just give someone an email address (x122@example.com) and they just use it, and everything to "example.com" (or, my domain in practice) always comes to me. I've never yet had to tell a person (other than some online automated system (edit: rarely there but happened and i was glad I could)) to change the address they use for me. Works well especially when businesses require one. Then if they spam me too much later, I just can auto-delete email to that address at either my email client or using the web tools of pair.com who hosts the domain. But, did I misunderstand you?
  - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
    In many cases an email address is used as a primary ID. Blog comments, gravatar images, and many social apps are this way. When you intro one contact to another, which email address do you use? Even for businesses it can be a pain. Fortunately, few of my own customers follow your protocol, but I've had a couple of very paranoid German users who signed up for my service under a numbered email address and then later emailed me from another address asking for help... and I had no idea who they were or ability to help them. If your concern is just spam, it's trivial to block an offending address. Why do you need to fracture your address? It seems like you're creating a massive headache both for yourself and for those who want to deal with you. For a point of reference, I've been pretty active on the web since its early days and at least after PG's "Plan for spam" essay, I've never had a serious issue. The worst problem has been somebody who has the same name as me and a similar email address. His elderly friends consistently email me by accident trying to reach him. Other than that, it's been fine. Recruiters have been mildly annoying, but even they don't send more than a couple of emails per week.
    - lcall 7y ago
      For some, I automatically change my "from" address using a rule in mutt, that change it based on the recipient. One could keep a list there I guess. For social media etc., it hasn't come up for me, but for those or multi-contacts sharing it, I would have to choose a shared email I guess, or use a main "business" one. (I don't personally use FB, or those sites that have you log in using contact from another site. Fortunately my activities have been able to work around those.) I do keep a log in my personal organizer of what # comes next, and what address I have used w/ whom (with my notes for each org I talk to, alonside the contact names, physical address, conversation logs in case I need to quote who said what when, etc). Then I try to use the same email address w/ them when I reply (a few keystrokes I learned, in mutt; this has not been often enough to be a pain, so far, but I can see how it could grow to a nuisance if I were doing that all day long). Maybe one could extract the email addresses from that list and use a bulk email every 3 years to say "here is my new address" or something, if that address started getting too much spam. I haven't done that to know if it is practical from a social standpoint: maybe not. Arguably at some level, it could be all more trouble than it is worth. It's become habit for me now. I guess I get annoyed when someone requires my email then abuses it, or I start getting spam of a type that I know their PC was compromised. At least once I got some really offensive spam from an address I had used only at an online site whose services I appreciated, but whose IT I couldn't trust much, because they claimed they had notified all customers who were compromised in a reported breach, but they never notified me. That knowledge might not have benefited me enough to justify all this work, but I was really glad to block that email address in future. Once I skipped my usual careful process and instantly regretted it (fortunately that spam has since petered out). Or, I can now auto-delete emails from public mailing lists I haven't used in many years but spammers still do. I also have one "throwaway" address I re-use for all businesses where I don't care if we lose track of each other, and I can change it later if needed. That might be the sweet spot for some. edit: Having my own domains lets me do it however I want, and change over time.
chdaniel 7y ago
Wow, that's interesting. If you change your device (phone/tablet/desktop/laptop), do you have to set them all up again? Set them all up = log in, sync signatures, display name etc. How do you access these email addresses anyways? I think it's safe to assume you're not paying a G Suite subscription for each of them...
- jen20 7y ago
  You can have a catch all in gmail that goes to your main mailbox. I do the same thing - every company and site gets a unique email so I know who has violated GDPR easily ;-)
  - igetspam 7y ago
    This. Been doing it for years. I have some other personal accounts and business accounts too but I aggressively track who is leaking/selling/sharing data and blacklist them.
  - lcall 7y ago
    Maybe what we are doing is similar in concept. I haven't been using gmail primarily, since they have so much power already and history suggests (to me at least) not to centralize too much, anywhere, as a matter of trust. (A breach there could be big indeed.)
    - jen20 7y ago
      Indeed - I have considered switching away from Google for these reasons but cannot find a provider I like more, and do not want to run infrastructure like this personally. Two killer features are: 1: catch all (office 365 did not have this when I switched away from them in 2014) 2: automatic categorisation which no one else seems to have. If anyone knows a provider that has these I’d be most interested in hearing about them!
- lcall 7y ago
  Thanks. (I'll try not to get arrogant, now that something I said was interesting.. ;) I actually don't access my email from my phone, but the hosting provider (again, pair.com) has a web UI for accessing email (very roughly comparable to gmail) so I certainly could log on there, or could install an IMAP email client on my phone to browse the email until it gets POPped off the host when I am back at the laptop. When switching laptops, I would restore my local email from a backup (I guess I'm willing to lose a day or three, and try to remember what was important), or rsync the email files back from my fallback/old laptop. I have a somewhat regular routine to upload those files to my pair.com shell account storage (tar, gz, gpg encrypted, then scp, and sometimes to my free google storage and/or AWS glacier), as well as rsyncing key files with a script (which has grown over time to become a full restore for all the accounts I use on my computer) to the old/fallback laptop, and semi-periodic full backups (carefully selected then tar/gz/gpg encrypted) of files that matter, to optical off-site media (not enough volume for tape quite yet I guess). I tried to answer the access question better in another edit to my original comment above.... Let me know if not.

by lcall 7y ago

AlchemistCamp 7y ago

Sounds exhausting and a bit of a pain for people who correspond with you. What's the point?

lcall 7y ago
I'm not sure how so. I just give someone an email address (x122@example.com) and they just use it, and everything to "example.com" (or, my domain in practice) always comes to me. I've never yet had to tell a person (other than some online automated system (edit: rarely there but happened and i was glad I could)) to change the address they use for me. Works well especially when businesses require one. Then if they spam me too much later, I just can auto-delete email to that address at either my email client or using the web tools of pair.com who hosts the domain. But, did I misunderstand you?
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  In many cases an email address is used as a primary ID. Blog comments, gravatar images, and many social apps are this way. When you intro one contact to another, which email address do you use? Even for businesses it can be a pain. Fortunately, few of my own customers follow your protocol, but I've had a couple of very paranoid German users who signed up for my service under a numbered email address and then later emailed me from another address asking for help... and I had no idea who they were or ability to help them. If your concern is just spam, it's trivial to block an offending address. Why do you need to fracture your address? It seems like you're creating a massive headache both for yourself and for those who want to deal with you. For a point of reference, I've been pretty active on the web since its early days and at least after PG's "Plan for spam" essay, I've never had a serious issue. The worst problem has been somebody who has the same name as me and a similar email address. His elderly friends consistently email me by accident trying to reach him. Other than that, it's been fine. Recruiters have been mildly annoying, but even they don't send more than a couple of emails per week.
  - lcall 7y ago
    For some, I automatically change my "from" address using a rule in mutt, that change it based on the recipient. One could keep a list there I guess. For social media etc., it hasn't come up for me, but for those or multi-contacts sharing it, I would have to choose a shared email I guess, or use a main "business" one. (I don't personally use FB, or those sites that have you log in using contact from another site. Fortunately my activities have been able to work around those.) I do keep a log in my personal organizer of what # comes next, and what address I have used w/ whom (with my notes for each org I talk to, alonside the contact names, physical address, conversation logs in case I need to quote who said what when, etc). Then I try to use the same email address w/ them when I reply (a few keystrokes I learned, in mutt; this has not been often enough to be a pain, so far, but I can see how it could grow to a nuisance if I were doing that all day long). Maybe one could extract the email addresses from that list and use a bulk email every 3 years to say "here is my new address" or something, if that address started getting too much spam. I haven't done that to know if it is practical from a social standpoint: maybe not. Arguably at some level, it could be all more trouble than it is worth. It's become habit for me now. I guess I get annoyed when someone requires my email then abuses it, or I start getting spam of a type that I know their PC was compromised. At least once I got some really offensive spam from an address I had used only at an online site whose services I appreciated, but whose IT I couldn't trust much, because they claimed they had notified all customers who were compromised in a reported breach, but they never notified me. That knowledge might not have benefited me enough to justify all this work, but I was really glad to block that email address in future. Once I skipped my usual careful process and instantly regretted it (fortunately that spam has since petered out). Or, I can now auto-delete emails from public mailing lists I haven't used in many years but spammers still do. I also have one "throwaway" address I re-use for all businesses where I don't care if we lose track of each other, and I can change it later if needed. That might be the sweet spot for some. edit: Having my own domains lets me do it however I want, and change over time.

chdaniel 7y ago

Wow, that's interesting. If you change your device (phone/tablet/desktop/laptop), do you have to set them all up again? Set them all up = log in, sync signatures, display name etc. How do you access these email addresses anyways? I think it's safe to assume you're not paying a G Suite subscription for each of them...

jen20 7y ago
You can have a catch all in gmail that goes to your main mailbox. I do the same thing - every company and site gets a unique email so I know who has violated GDPR easily ;-)
- igetspam 7y ago
  This. Been doing it for years. I have some other personal accounts and business accounts too but I aggressively track who is leaking/selling/sharing data and blacklist them.
- lcall 7y ago
  Maybe what we are doing is similar in concept. I haven't been using gmail primarily, since they have so much power already and history suggests (to me at least) not to centralize too much, anywhere, as a matter of trust. (A breach there could be big indeed.)
  - jen20 7y ago
    Indeed - I have considered switching away from Google for these reasons but cannot find a provider I like more, and do not want to run infrastructure like this personally. Two killer features are: 1: catch all (office 365 did not have this when I switched away from them in 2014) 2: automatic categorisation which no one else seems to have. If anyone knows a provider that has these I’d be most interested in hearing about them!
lcall 7y ago
Thanks. (I'll try not to get arrogant, now that something I said was interesting.. ;) I actually don't access my email from my phone, but the hosting provider (again, pair.com) has a web UI for accessing email (very roughly comparable to gmail) so I certainly could log on there, or could install an IMAP email client on my phone to browse the email until it gets POPped off the host when I am back at the laptop. When switching laptops, I would restore my local email from a backup (I guess I'm willing to lose a day or three, and try to remember what was important), or rsync the email files back from my fallback/old laptop. I have a somewhat regular routine to upload those files to my pair.com shell account storage (tar, gz, gpg encrypted, then scp, and sometimes to my free google storage and/or AWS glacier), as well as rsyncing key files with a script (which has grown over time to become a full restore for all the accounts I use on my computer) to the old/fallback laptop, and semi-periodic full backups (carefully selected then tar/gz/gpg encrypted) of files that matter, to optical off-site media (not enough volume for tape quite yet I guess). I tried to answer the access question better in another edit to my original comment above.... Let me know if not.