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I own the domain name for my last name, so that I have the email address [firstname]@[lastname].com. But when signing up for services I like to use my domain as
by OkGoDoIt 6y ago
I own the domain name for my last name, so that I have the email address [firstname]@[lastname].com. But when signing up for services I like to use my domain as a catchall so I can have unique email addresses for each service. Of course that means I receive all emails sent to anything at [lastname].com. Even though my last name is not that common, there’s apparently a ton of people with my last name who sign up for services using their first name @[lastname].com, even though they obviously don’t have access to that email address and haven’t for at least the 8 years that I’ve owned the domain name. I’ve never understood what compels a person to type in an email address for service if they don’t actually have access to that email. And yes, I see plenty of bank accounts and other important accounts as mentioned in the article. It’s mind-boggling. I also get plenty of personal email as well, intended for people with that first name and last name. In those cases I usually reply to tell them they have the wrong email address, and more than once someone has responded back again asking me if I could pass the message along to that person as if I’m supposed to know them.
- shocks 6y agoI’m the same except instead of [lastname] it’s ‘example’. The tld is a little rarer but plenty of people still use it as garbage input to web forms!
- taejo 6y agoI'm not sure if you're using "example" as a metasyntactic variable, or you're actually the owner of example.com. If it's the latter, I do use your domain for forms that require an email but I don't actually want feedback from. In my defense, your web page says "You may use this domain in literature without prior coordination or asking for permission." This isn't literature, but I didn't think I needed permission or coordination for other users either.
- gscott 6y agoI used to use a catchall but every few months spammers will use my domain in their spam from line and I would get thousands of bounces.
- lorenzhs 6y agoYou might want to set up a DMARC policy for your domain. Since I set mine to "p=reject" I haven't had any such issues. DMARC extends DKIM and SPF, and you (typically) need to pass at least one of those to pass DMARC.