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It took me a while to figure this out but I've now settled with the following: - mail@firstlast.tld for personal emails directed at me only and written by a hu

It took me a while to figure this out but I've now settled with the following: - mail@firstlast.tld for personal emails directed at me only and written by a human being, i.e. emails that warrant my personal response - <SomeServiceIsignedUpfor>@firstlast.tld for automated emails from services like Amazon, Facebook, eBay, HN, …. These are usually computer-generated emails that don't warrant a response, so they are merely notifications. The neat thing about this approach is that: a) the list of email aliases contains all the services I've signed up for, ever b) I can easily stop a service from sending me emails by simply deleting the alias. In particular, if an email address leaks to spammers, I simply delete it. c) I can distinguish between personal and non-personal email and can prioritize accordingly. I look at my personal emails more often than at my non-personal ones.

knr2345 7y ago
Do you have a method for quickly creating new aliases on the fly? My setup is nearly the same. I use two domains such as firstlast.tld and genericwords.tld. Genericwords.tld has umbrella aliases for social, apps, subscriptions, orders, etc. I have rules setup up per umbrella alias to delete after 30 days, or always mark as read, or never mark as read. I originally had service/site specific aliases in mind for easy deletion, but for my setup this creates a layer of friction that makes it quite cumbersome. I considered umbrella+servicename aliases but those are not always guaranteed to be accepted.
- KitDuncan 7y ago
  Just use a catchall and you have to do nothing.
  - scintill76 7y ago
    You also get more spam, sent to sales@domain, john@domain, alex@domain...
    - KitDuncan 7y ago
      Never once got spam on an email I didn't give out.
- codethief 7y ago
  Yes, umbrella+servicename sometimes causes issues as I had to learn the hard way, too. As for me, I use PostfixAdmin (https://github.com/postfixadmin/postfixadmin https://github.com/postfixadmin/postfixadmin) to add aliases. Certainly not the quickest method but fairly quick I'd say. Clearly, it'd be even nicer if my password manager created an email alias for new accounts automatically.

knr2345 7y ago

Do you have a method for quickly creating new aliases on the fly? My setup is nearly the same. I use two domains such as firstlast.tld and genericwords.tld. Genericwords.tld has umbrella aliases for social, apps, subscriptions, orders, etc. I have rules setup up per umbrella alias to delete after 30 days, or always mark as read, or never mark as read. I originally had service/site specific aliases in mind for easy deletion, but for my setup this creates a layer of friction that makes it quite cumbersome. I considered umbrella+servicename aliases but those are not always guaranteed to be accepted.

KitDuncan 7y ago
Just use a catchall and you have to do nothing.
- scintill76 7y ago
  You also get more spam, sent to sales@domain, john@domain, alex@domain...
  - KitDuncan 7y ago
    Never once got spam on an email I didn't give out.
codethief 7y ago
Yes, umbrella+servicename sometimes causes issues as I had to learn the hard way, too. As for me, I use PostfixAdmin (https://github.com/postfixadmin/postfixadmin https://github.com/postfixadmin/postfixadmin) to add aliases. Certainly not the quickest method but fairly quick I'd say. Clearly, it'd be even nicer if my password manager created an email alias for new accounts automatically.