29 ms·

Masked email from Fastmail and 1Password

377 points by davidbarker 5y ago

philliphaydon 5y ago
Wont this just get fastmail.com blocked on registrations?
- justusthane 5y ago
  Hopefully not. These are still valid email addresses, they aren't throwaways (unless you want to throw one of them away!).
  - philliphaydon 5y ago
    I think we will find that majority of companies that do potentially block it would be companies we don't want to do anything with to begin with. My thinking is a lot of companies only want a single user to register once so they can track that user anyway they can. For example, I opened up Agoda once in firefox private tab, and searched for 2 specific hotels to get an idea of pricing. As I had signed into Agoda, less than 5 minutes after searching both those hotels were listed on facebook with discounts. So with ad's and social media blocked, the only way they could link me was via email. If everyone starts using fastmail to hide their email, then companies cannot do this targeted advertising and will block it.
    - andrewmunsell 5y ago
      FastMail does support custom domains for disposable email addresses. They also have a pretty big library of email domains to choose from that I can create normal alias for, so I'd be surprised to not see those come as an option in the future.
davzie 5y ago
I love the idea of doing this. Just like I do the idea of using Apple's "hide my email" feature. But in reality you're completely locking yourself into that provider. What if I want to change provider or the provider decides to sunset this feature. My logins are now split up so much it'll be a full time job getting them set back to my primary email address. It's a trade-off I guess because you can't solve it any other way from what I know of!
- rntksi 5y ago
  Exactly. For people who want to do this and care about retaining ownership, would be probably wise to run their own email servers and using different patterns of catch all addresses.
- davidjfelix 5y ago
  What do you do if you want to change email provider or your email provider decides to stop their email service. I think a lot of people have been spoiled by gmail's longevity. Unless you're using your own domain it's a wash anyways right? I think this is an acceptable trust. I personally prefer trusting something with more longevity than fastmail (apple hide my email).
  - davzie 5y ago
    I have my own domain
  - beyer 5y ago
    Buy a super cheap domain that you park all of these new email addresses at, like 7467j.com. Then, if you ever need to switch providers, take the entire domain with you.
  - jorams 5y ago
    > I think a lot of people have been spoiled by gmail's longevity. > I personally prefer trusting something with more longevity than fastmail Fastmail launched 5 years before Gmail, in 1999. It's also a paid product with a sustainable business model. It's hard to get more longevity than that.
  - apple4ever 5y ago
    > I think a lot of people have been spoiled by gmail's longevity. > I personally prefer trusting something with more longevity than fastmail (apple hide my email). Fastmail (launched 1999) is older than Gmail (launched 2004).
- markild 5y ago
  They actually seem to have thought about this. > New Masked Email addresses will be created @fastmail.com. You can change this in Settings → Domains I agree with you, and I'm looking forward to be trying this out.
woutr_be 5y ago
That's really nice, and exactly what I've been waiting for. I've been using a third party service for a while now, but it was a pain to have to manually create the email address first. Was tempted to switch to Apple, but that would lock me in to the Apple ecosystem completely. Being able to use two services that I use anyway is the perfect solution for me.
whitehouse3 5y ago
I do this with fastmail already. I have a domain that accepts email to *@domain.tld —- all the messages reach one inbox. All my online accounts have the form service-name@domain.tld Makes it easy when I receive spam to see who sold my email address. There’s also zero overhead to “create” a new one. It works for any address.
- rlpb 5y ago
  The trouble with *@domain.tld is that you get that many times as much spam. Unless your spam filter is 100% accurate, that increases the amount of spam that gets through.
  - artificialLimbs 5y ago
    I almost never get spam (see reply above), and if I do, then those addresses can be filtered easily. That is one of the purposes of using this setup.
  - jabroni_salad 5y ago
    I work through this by only accepting wildcards on a subdomain. I have a 'real' email address on the parent domain for actual human correspondence. Services and salespeople get the subdomain.
  - maverwa 5y ago
    I am using name@random_site.mydomain because i encountered a few sites that rejected name+random_site@mydomain. reduces the "random name @ domain" spam, but still works good.
- warhorse10_9 5y ago
  I do this too. My only issue I am having right now is I am "locked" to my current registrar because of how it is set up. Do you have a mail server you are using or just having your registrar do it? I am looking for alternate solutions that dont cost much.
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
deadalus 5y ago
We need additional research, funding and development into the Darkmail (DMTP/DMAP) protocols. https://darkmail.info/ https://darkmail.info/
- spacedcowboy 5y ago
  Lavabit went under though, right ? I think the feds pretty seriously proved they could pull the rug out from under anyone using it.
catillac 5y ago
Long time Fastmail and 1Pass user here. While I agree that it would be best to not be locked in to particular providers, these are two of the providers who have a lot of my trust and to whom I’m paid up years in advance (at least in Fastmails case). Very excited to use this feature.
- markild 5y ago
  As mentioned above, but which I think is a point worth being made several times, because I really think they've done a lot correctly here: You can use your own domain.
  - thesimon 5y ago
    >You can use your own domain. But only if you use Fastmail for that domain.
    - sneak 5y ago
      Nah, you can set up a catchall on almost any provider and generate your own random usernames.
- jtdressel 5y ago
  Thanks for the vote of confidence! If you have a custom domain at fastmail you can avoid any lock-in by using it for your masked addresses. Settings -> Domains -> Team Settings -> Masked email domain. With that it's entirely portable. You can point your mx records at any other provider. Disclosure - I work at 1Password, though I had only tangential involvement in this effort.
  - brongondwana 5y ago
    I second those thanks. We very much appreciate your confidence in us! Disclosure - I run Fastmail, though also only had tangential involvement in this effort.
  - tylergetsay 5y ago
noisy_boy 5y ago
The only reason I don't share my fastmail email id except for very specific cases is the fear of it getting circulated for spam. With this feature, I can stop using my gmail account for general junk.
davemtl 5y ago
My worry was this required both FastMail and 1Password, to my delight you only need FastMail. Masked Email is an option under settings.
- photon-torpedo 5y ago
  Already in the past I've been (ab)using Fastmail's email alias feature for this kind of purpose. Though it was a bit inconvenient as the UI always said that it takes 15 minutes for the new alias to become fully active. Great to see they now have simplified this!
  - LilBytes 5y ago
    I'm a current user of Fastmail and set up a wildcard alias for this purpose: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277942-Catchall-Wildcard-aliases https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277942-Ca... When I get spam to a particular alias, I blacklist it to my spam folder. Naturally this might get a little difficult if a spam bot ever figures this out where I'd need to move to a whitelist rather than blacklist process. But it's worked flawlessly for years so far. At least with my method I don't need to create the alias in advance.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  This is good to know. I might use this in a few scenarios, but I would not be willing to implement a password management service to get it.
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obtino 5y ago
There was a Show HN project last year that did something similar. I'd be keen to try that out before this one. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the link.
darkwater 5y ago
But with Fastmail you can already do it using $RANDOM_STRING@$LOCAL_PART.fastmail.com and whichever password manager you use (you just have to do it in a more manual way, which in the long run can be a PITA, I understand)
- brongondwana 5y ago
  One of the big selling points of this idea, and why we wanted to partner with 1Password for it, is that it has to be easy! Sure creating a new password for every site is a good idea, but the 1P plugin makes it so easy that it's simpler to use the really secure password it generates than to come up with something yourself. And this "generate a Masked Email right there in the form where you're using it" pattern means that the friction is so low that it's a viable choice - it's EASIER to do the safe thing, and that's the real game changer.
  - darkwater 5y ago
    Absolutely, making it easy it's a big selling point. As a happy FastMail customer, I would really like to see a similar thing with BitWarden which is my password manager of choice. Anyway, keep up the good work!
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Crack12 5y ago
I really wish that fastmail wasn't based in australia.. edit because of downvote: I'm referencing the new data control laws (it is even beyond surveillance at this point), which makes it impossible to anyone who cares to use any autralia based products. I should have made that more clear.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  The laws in question have no meaningful impact on Fastmail, and the amount of FUD concerning those laws is unreal. Fastmail wasn't end-to-end encrypted to begin with, so laws requiring backdoors have no relevance to Fastmail. And every civilized country has some legal method to compel information from companies relating to significant criminal activity.
  - sneak 5y ago
    You're right, of course, but this simply switches the "reason not to use Fastmail" from "based in Australia" to "not e2e encrypted and can rat out your entire email history".
    - barbazoo 5y ago
      I don't see e2ee email happening anytime soon. The technology is just not very user friendly. And honestly, without e2ee, I don't put much trust into providers like Protonmail either because at some point the email is coming in as plain text and that's where one could always siphon it off.
    - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
      I would consider that a valid position to take! I don't feel my threat model justifies the limitations of E2E email, but many do. I am not trying to tell you to use Fastmail, just that fear of doing so explicitly because of Australian law is silly. ;)
spansoa 5y ago
There's a few alternatives to this: https://www.spreadprivacy.com/introducing-email-protection-beta/ https://www.spreadprivacy.com/introducing-email-protection-b... (beta only) https://simplelogin.io/ https://simplelogin.io/ https://anonaddy.com/ https://anonaddy.com/ I know there are plenty of others, but I use all the above and found them reliable and intuitive.
rPlayer6554 5y ago
As much as this is a cool feature, the distoypian anti-privacy laws Australia [0] (where Fastmail is based) prevents me from ever using their service. I know it isn't their fault but it has to be said. [0] https://www.iflscience.com/policy/australias-new-police-powers-allow-them-to-control-social-media-accounts-delete-data/ https://www.iflscience.com/policy/australias-new-police-powe... [1]
- BugWatch 5y ago
  It was the same, in my case. I was considering them for an email service, and then that happened.
ziml77 5y ago
Literally 2 days ago was wanting something like this to use alongside a privacy.com card! This is great to have and since the addresses are fastmail addresses, they're unblockable unlike various throwaway address services that play a cat-and-mouse game.
m-p-3 5y ago
I suggested this feature as a paid option to Bitwarden, hopefully they'll add this. For now I'm using Firefox Relay, but the 5-email limit (without a plan for more) is a showstopper.
kmfrk 5y ago
Does this also work for existing accounts within 1Password with e-mail addresses attached? I can't find anything in the 1Password interface to change a login for current accounts. All the language makes it sound like it's only upon login/account creation. I guess the fallback is just manually creating one in Fastmail, but it's a bummer if you can't just do it from one place in 1Password.
LilBytes 5y ago
Amazing feature. Couldn't be happier as a 1P and Fastmail user. Thanks!
tomlong 5y ago
I use fastmail's * alias against a custom domain, to achieve a similar thing. It forwards mail at any address to my normal email, then I just pick a name on signup, ie. hn@emaildomain.com. I have registered a domain just for the purpose which doesn't have my name in it or host any websites or anything else which can be used to leak my identity with a whois privacy guard service. It has the dual advantages of being guessable by me if something goes tits up with my self-hosted bitwarden, and I can eyeball who has leaked my email address on incoming spam.
MontagFTB 5y ago
Is this available for the permanent 1Password 7 license, or only for subscription customers?
meigwilym 5y ago
I wonder if this is tied in with haveibeenpwned.com? Compromised emails could almost be deleted automatically.
vishnugupta 5y ago
I'm using Fastmail's alias to serve the same purpose. It seems Masked Email is useful primarily if you have 1Password account as a deeper integration to auto-fil email addresses during sign-up.
SamWhited 5y ago
I briefly got very excited about this since I'm a fastmail user, but apparently I need a 1Password account too? I don'nt understand why that would be, Fastmail is the email provider, they are the ones who can create random aliases. I don't use 1Password (they're terrible in my previous experiences with them and I prefer something that vaguely operates on principals I like), so why should I be forced to give them my data just to use a feature of my email provider? I'm sure there's something important I'm missing here.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  It looks the 1Password integration is only for convenience. You can still go into Fastmail settings and create masked email addresses manually.
  - SamWhited 5y ago
    That's great news! The post made it sound like you had to have a 1Password account, but now that it's showing up in my account it doesn't appear to be the case. Thanks!
- lucideer 5y ago
  2nd confirmation here: I'm a Fastmail user who's never had a 1Password account and I seem to be able to create masked emails in settings no problem.
focom 5y ago
Would be great to have it with bitwarden.com as well
alexwasserman 5y ago
Interestingly Fastmail have also allowed subdomains in addition to name+blah@domain.com routing, to make it harder to guess your "real" email. So you can sign up for new companies with random@someservice.mydomain.com and have it still route into our inbox. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060591053-Plus-addressing-and-subdomain-addressing https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060591053-Plu... I've done this a bunch in past, but wish it was easier to go back and change existing services. Also found a couple that reject sign-ups when their name is in the username part. As a user of both 1Pass and Fastmail for years, this is a really neat addition. Next I'd love 1Pass to generate random phone numbers to use that I can recall quickly for things like supermarket checkout where I need to enter a number to get their discounts, and I don't want to use my real one. Doesn't even need to be a genuine phone line, just a 10 digit code.
- jayknight 5y ago
  Kroger, at least, let's you change your "alternate ID" to any 10 digit number that isn't used by someone else. Just log in to the web site and change it.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
  My personal solution to this problem was: * register a pseudonymous domain and use Fastmail to forward it in to my real email * use Twilio + a little TwiML to register a real phone number in my area code & have all messages/calls forward to my cell This let me establish trust domains: when I share my email with an untrusted entity they get companyname@mypseudonym.com & the phone number I registered before. I always have the ability to know where the communications come from & can quickly cut off junk/spam at either source[1]. And if a company is trustworthy I could always move them to my real domain/phone if I so wanted. [1]: Phone is obviously harder as there's only one number, but legitimate companies seldom if ever call – their junk is from a consistent text source that's easier to block. My burner & my clean numbers get about the same amount of autodialer calls, sadly.
- the_other 5y ago
  > Also found a couple that reject sign-ups when their name is in the username part. This is how you know not to use that company.
YPPH 5y ago
I have always wanted to go down the one email per service method but it seemed to cumbersome to manage. Looks like it may be feasible now. As someone who uses Fastmail and 1Password, thank you for posting this. Currently really impressed with both services, the prospect of linking the two and obtaining unique email addresses is even better!
- Normal_gaussian 5y ago
  I've been doing it with fastmail for a long time (I used another provider before them as well). I really don't see that the 1P integration changes much (I don't use 1P though, I use Bitwarden and KeepassXC, so maybe I'm missing something?).
- mulmen 5y ago
  I do it but you need a client that supports it in replies. The Fastmail web UI allows you to send from the custom email address. Clients like iOS Mail demand you configure an account-per-sender rather than letting you add an arbitrary address to the from: line. I end up in a situation where if I don't pay close attention I leak my "main" email address.
brongondwana 5y ago
And of course it's all just JMAP under the hood! ["MaskedEmail/set", { "create" : { "k1" : { "state" : "enabled", "description" : "Hacker News", "url" : "https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com" } } }, "R1"] returns: ["MaskedEmail/set", { "created" : { "k1" : { "id" : "masked-123456", "email" : "flighty.emu5803@mydomain.example", "createdAt" : "2021-09-28T14:19:19Z" } } }, "R1"] Very simple to work with.
- ishanjain28 5y ago
  Oh wow. I knew fastmail was building JMAP but I didn't think to look at JMAP when I was trying to find fastmail's API that can be used to integrate this in other services. This is really nice compared to the SOAP/XML monstrosity I stumbled upon, heh.
tmslnz 5y ago
Like many others in this thread, I have been using alias-to-subdomain remapping with Fastmail since time immemorial. Having this trick automated to some degree can be convenient for less geeky or fastidious users than I :) Other than thinning my online identity to make any assumed attempts at correlation harder, in a couple of cases over the years I had the pleasure to "Gotcha!" companies selling (or losing) their users' email addresses. In other cases I also received unrelated spam on addresses as a result of undisclosed or less-publicised security breaches.
yepthatsreality 5y ago
This feature is already available without 1Password account linked to Fastmail. You can already create email addresses with a random name linked to one of hundred or so domain names and have it forwarded to your email. I believe this page just details the automated 1Password integration.
stayfrosty420 5y ago
What a brilliant feature. May consider using fastmail now
cosentiyes 5y ago
It'd be great to see this as a somewhat generic feature for generating usernames and email aliases in 1password. I don't use fastmail and I'm not particularly interested in switching at this point in time. I would love it if 1password had a hook where you provide your custom domain and it generates a random address according to some schema defined using the current password-style configurator. I assume that the current fastmail limitation is because fastmail is ensuring that there is no conflict with existing aliases (which seems like it should be very low probability)?
DASD 5y ago
Sounds great! Congratulations on the new offering. As a sidenote, when Fastmail blogs, can you put that on a subdomain? Webmail interface is really sluggish right now which I assume is an effect of this news.
hcurtiss 5y ago
Looks great, but a bummer for Fastmail subscribers who use Lastpass. I can't imagine the nightmare of switching my family from Lastpass to 1Password. Password managers truly do create a lot of intertia. Though we're all Apple, at least I have the family using a third-party password manager in case we one day change hardware providers. For now, I suppose I'll have to stick with manually creating aliases.
- saint-loup 5y ago
  I'm in the same situation, but with Bitwarden and not Lastpass. It's more of a hassle, but you can go to Settings > Masked Mails and generate mails as you wish.
sneak 5y ago
Use your own domain for this! Being locked in to a provider domain means you can never easily switch from them. It's a form of vendor lock-in. (Fastmail supports using your own domain, of course, but they also don't encrypt at rest in a way not readable to Fastmail, so you should avoid them.) I wrote up a step by step howto for switching over to your own domain name: https://sneak.berlin/20201029/stop-emailing-like-a-rube/ https://sneak.berlin/20201029/stop-emailing-like-a-rube/
romwell 5y ago
FWIW, Yahoo! (of all places!) has had this feature for many years. You can create an arbitrary number of disposable email addresses, keeping up to 50 of them active at a time. You choose a prefix, and then your disposables have the form prefix-<whatever you want>@yahoo.com.
93po 5y ago
This is great. I have hundreds of alias accounts in my fastmail for this exact purpose. It's really satisfying just making emails bounce back when they start sending spam. I also identified a service I used that was selling my email to straight up scammers/spammers. I wish the block option for masked aliases was bouncing the emails and not sending them to trash.
rwojo 5y ago
Something not mentioned much is that you can respond to these messages that come in through a Masked Email, and your identity is hidden on the outbound messages as well. They seamlessly integrate with the sender identity feature in Fastmail making it very clear that you are replying from the Masked Email. From a quick analysis on the headers, I don't see anything that leaks who your real identity is, but of course Fastmail knows and could reveal that if legal reasons exist. Overall smooth feature along with the ability to use a custom domain for portability (to a less sophisticated wildcard setup, or another provider).
shafyy 5y ago
This is great, but why does Fastmail need 1Password to do this? Just a marketing collab thing?
dannysu 5y ago
@Fastmail: Please let me delete a masked email after creating it. Thanks. I just tried it with my own domain via the Fastmail iOS app. There doesn’t seem to be a way to delete things. I do like that I can attach notes and have an easy block button. I might start using it instead of my existing wildcard setup, but need delete. Using unique email per service is really great. I detected Zenni Optical either had a security breach or sold my information because of the unique email I used.
- czottmann 5y ago
  Go to Fastmail → Settings → Masked Email. There, click the "Edit" link next to the address you want to delete. On the following page, there's a big red "Delete" button. Works for me. :) Update: looks like deletion only works when using the website, though.
  - dannysu 5y ago
    Ah thanks. Currently out so didn’t check the desktop website. Hope the delete button can work on mobile too. This is a great feature. I’m glad this will bring it to more people.
tangoalpha 5y ago
This would be a large personal disaster and a full time personal project if the service provider decides to shut down the service. One would have to crawl through all services they have signed up for to update the email addresses. Instead get a domain. Configure email as well as a catch all address. Example anything@yourdomain.com would reach name@yourdomain.com which you use as your primary email address. And say, if I am signing up for Netflix, I would give the email as netflix@yourdomain.com. The email automatically reaches my single primary inbox with the catch-all behavior. And if I find a lot of spam to netflix@yourdomain.com, I know which service is leaking my email address and I can quickly block all emails sent to netflix@yourdomain.com
- omarhaneef 5y ago
  Okay, you convinced me that this is a good idea. I can get a domain pretty easily but I hate the idea of managing my own email. Do you recommend a particular provider? Zoho or something?
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    Ideally, one would use me+uber@domain.tld / me+amzn@domain.tld / me+apple@domain.tld but then the identity me@domain.tld isn't masked. If you prefer email forwarding, then: Cloudflare announced a free email-forwarding service just yesterday [0]. Not sure if they provide unlimited email forwarding rules. Other domain registrars like domains.google and namecheap.com also support email forwarding at no-cost. If you prefer a managed mailbox, then: Zoho Mail, Fresh Mail, AWS WorkMail et al are nice if you'd also like to send emails using the address you sign up with. Other than that, if you're technically inclined, then have SES plonk incoming emails in to S3 [1] Be careful registering domain.tld without whois shield and/or with TLDs that require registrant to publicly reveal ownership (like .in) See also: simplelogin.io and anonaddy.com [0] https://archive.is/BEKi7 https://archive.is/BEKi7 [1] https://archive.is/2iQCN https://archive.is/2iQCN
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Many registrars offer catch-all forwarding (to your free personal email), which would be your best bet if you don't expect to need to send email. If you can afford $6/mo, Google Workspace isn't bad, there's generally better security and it grants you a lot of control over your account's settings (and will remove ads from the Gmail app on your phone, even when only looking at your @gmail account inbox). Otherwize, Zoho works, but now costs $12/user/year (it used to be free) so ymmv. Great if you were planning on pure POP/IMAP usage anyways.
dannysu 5y ago
@Fastmail: Another request. If I’m using my own domain, could the email generated be simpler? Instead of “some.thing1234@”, I’d rather just have “thing1234@“. Update: hmmm… looks like I can’t initiate an email with masked email though. I can set up my wildcard to do that in the more rare case when I need to initiate email.
purplejacket 5y ago
Fastmail: Couldn't you give a 2 or 3 paragraph summary of your service instead of this silly "easy to read" format that seems all the rage for web pages over the last 10+ years? I mean, fastmail of all companies should get this. I have to come to hacker news to actually understand what is being offered, rather than some glitzy marketing haiku that could mean any number of things.
nephanth 5y ago
Some time ago, a site called randomail proposed the same service, but it closed... The problem is that registration forms often blocked randomail addresses, probably because the domain was on spam blocklists
replwoacause 5y ago
How is this different than user aliases? I am already making heavy use of those and this seems to do the same thing.
throwaway81523 5y ago
This looks like a cross between Mailinator and Fastmail. Great idea, but why is 1password involved? I don't want to sign up with yet another damn service, and I'm happy using my browser password store (or email client API key) to access fastmail without needing 1password. I don't understand why services like 1password even exist. They just increase your computer's attack surface. Am I missing something?
thiht 5y ago
Does the 1password integration use an open Fastmail API that any password manager could theoretically use, or is it a deal they have exclusively with 1password? I’d love this feature with Bitwarden.
jackvalentine 5y ago
I love Fastmail, I love 1password the two most important services in my life that I can pay for and the most satisfying. I've just registered a new random domain to use for these aliases to further separate my identity from email leaks.
glumreaper 5y ago
I'm surprised spamgourmet.com has not been mentioned - created-on-use forwarding addresses with a built-in self destruct. It is a superb solution.

377 points by davidbarker 5y ago

philliphaydon 5y ago

Wont this just get fastmail.com blocked on registrations?

justusthane 5y ago
Hopefully not. These are still valid email addresses, they aren't throwaways (unless you want to throw one of them away!).
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  I think we will find that majority of companies that do potentially block it would be companies we don't want to do anything with to begin with. My thinking is a lot of companies only want a single user to register once so they can track that user anyway they can. For example, I opened up Agoda once in firefox private tab, and searched for 2 specific hotels to get an idea of pricing. As I had signed into Agoda, less than 5 minutes after searching both those hotels were listed on facebook with discounts. So with ad's and social media blocked, the only way they could link me was via email. If everyone starts using fastmail to hide their email, then companies cannot do this targeted advertising and will block it.
  - andrewmunsell 5y ago
    FastMail does support custom domains for disposable email addresses. They also have a pretty big library of email domains to choose from that I can create normal alias for, so I'd be surprised to not see those come as an option in the future.

davzie 5y ago

I love the idea of doing this. Just like I do the idea of using Apple's "hide my email" feature. But in reality you're completely locking yourself into that provider. What if I want to change provider or the provider decides to sunset this feature. My logins are now split up so much it'll be a full time job getting them set back to my primary email address. It's a trade-off I guess because you can't solve it any other way from what I know of!

rntksi 5y ago
Exactly. For people who want to do this and care about retaining ownership, would be probably wise to run their own email servers and using different patterns of catch all addresses.
davidjfelix 5y ago
What do you do if you want to change email provider or your email provider decides to stop their email service. I think a lot of people have been spoiled by gmail's longevity. Unless you're using your own domain it's a wash anyways right? I think this is an acceptable trust. I personally prefer trusting something with more longevity than fastmail (apple hide my email).
- davzie 5y ago
  I have my own domain
- beyer 5y ago
  Buy a super cheap domain that you park all of these new email addresses at, like 7467j.com. Then, if you ever need to switch providers, take the entire domain with you.
- jorams 5y ago
  > I think a lot of people have been spoiled by gmail's longevity. > I personally prefer trusting something with more longevity than fastmail Fastmail launched 5 years before Gmail, in 1999. It's also a paid product with a sustainable business model. It's hard to get more longevity than that.
- apple4ever 5y ago
  > I think a lot of people have been spoiled by gmail's longevity. > I personally prefer trusting something with more longevity than fastmail (apple hide my email). Fastmail (launched 1999) is older than Gmail (launched 2004).
markild 5y ago
They actually seem to have thought about this. > New Masked Email addresses will be created @fastmail.com. You can change this in Settings → Domains I agree with you, and I'm looking forward to be trying this out.

woutr_be 5y ago

That's really nice, and exactly what I've been waiting for. I've been using a third party service for a while now, but it was a pain to have to manually create the email address first. Was tempted to switch to Apple, but that would lock me in to the Apple ecosystem completely. Being able to use two services that I use anyway is the perfect solution for me.

whitehouse3 5y ago

I do this with fastmail already. I have a domain that accepts email to *@domain.tld —- all the messages reach one inbox. All my online accounts have the form service-name@domain.tld Makes it easy when I receive spam to see who sold my email address. There’s also zero overhead to “create” a new one. It works for any address.

rlpb 5y ago
The trouble with *@domain.tld is that you get that many times as much spam. Unless your spam filter is 100% accurate, that increases the amount of spam that gets through.
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  I almost never get spam (see reply above), and if I do, then those addresses can be filtered easily. That is one of the purposes of using this setup.
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  I work through this by only accepting wildcards on a subdomain. I have a 'real' email address on the parent domain for actual human correspondence. Services and salespeople get the subdomain.
- maverwa 5y ago
  I am using name@random_site.mydomain because i encountered a few sites that rejected name+random_site@mydomain. reduces the "random name @ domain" spam, but still works good.
warhorse10_9 5y ago
I do this too. My only issue I am having right now is I am "locked" to my current registrar because of how it is set up. Do you have a mail server you are using or just having your registrar do it? I am looking for alternate solutions that dont cost much.
artificialLimbs 5y ago

deadalus 5y ago

We need additional research, funding and development into the Darkmail (DMTP/DMAP) protocols. https://darkmail.info/ https://darkmail.info/

spacedcowboy 5y ago
Lavabit went under though, right ? I think the feds pretty seriously proved they could pull the rug out from under anyone using it.

catillac 5y ago

Long time Fastmail and 1Pass user here. While I agree that it would be best to not be locked in to particular providers, these are two of the providers who have a lot of my trust and to whom I’m paid up years in advance (at least in Fastmails case). Very excited to use this feature.

markild 5y ago
As mentioned above, but which I think is a point worth being made several times, because I really think they've done a lot correctly here: You can use your own domain.
- thesimon 5y ago
  >You can use your own domain. But only if you use Fastmail for that domain.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Nah, you can set up a catchall on almost any provider and generate your own random usernames.
jtdressel 5y ago
Thanks for the vote of confidence! If you have a custom domain at fastmail you can avoid any lock-in by using it for your masked addresses. Settings -> Domains -> Team Settings -> Masked email domain. With that it's entirely portable. You can point your mx records at any other provider. Disclosure - I work at 1Password, though I had only tangential involvement in this effort.
- brongondwana 5y ago
  I second those thanks. We very much appreciate your confidence in us! Disclosure - I run Fastmail, though also only had tangential involvement in this effort.
- tylergetsay 5y ago

noisy_boy 5y ago

The only reason I don't share my fastmail email id except for very specific cases is the fear of it getting circulated for spam. With this feature, I can stop using my gmail account for general junk.

davemtl 5y ago

My worry was this required both FastMail and 1Password, to my delight you only need FastMail. Masked Email is an option under settings.

photon-torpedo 5y ago
Already in the past I've been (ab)using Fastmail's email alias feature for this kind of purpose. Though it was a bit inconvenient as the UI always said that it takes 15 minutes for the new alias to become fully active. Great to see they now have simplified this!
- LilBytes 5y ago
  I'm a current user of Fastmail and set up a wildcard alias for this purpose: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277942-Catchall-Wildcard-aliases https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277942-Ca... When I get spam to a particular alias, I blacklist it to my spam folder. Naturally this might get a little difficult if a spam bot ever figures this out where I'd need to move to a whitelist rather than blacklist process. But it's worked flawlessly for years so far. At least with my method I don't need to create the alias in advance.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
This is good to know. I might use this in a few scenarios, but I would not be willing to implement a password management service to get it.

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obtino 5y ago

There was a Show HN project last year that did something similar. I'd be keen to try that out before this one. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the link.

darkwater 5y ago

But with Fastmail you can already do it using $RANDOM_STRING@$LOCAL_PART.fastmail.com and whichever password manager you use (you just have to do it in a more manual way, which in the long run can be a PITA, I understand)

brongondwana 5y ago
One of the big selling points of this idea, and why we wanted to partner with 1Password for it, is that it has to be easy! Sure creating a new password for every site is a good idea, but the 1P plugin makes it so easy that it's simpler to use the really secure password it generates than to come up with something yourself. And this "generate a Masked Email right there in the form where you're using it" pattern means that the friction is so low that it's a viable choice - it's EASIER to do the safe thing, and that's the real game changer.
- darkwater 5y ago
  Absolutely, making it easy it's a big selling point. As a happy FastMail customer, I would really like to see a similar thing with BitWarden which is my password manager of choice. Anyway, keep up the good work!

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Crack12 5y ago

I really wish that fastmail wasn't based in australia.. edit because of downvote: I'm referencing the new data control laws (it is even beyond surveillance at this point), which makes it impossible to anyone who cares to use any autralia based products. I should have made that more clear.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
The laws in question have no meaningful impact on Fastmail, and the amount of FUD concerning those laws is unreal. Fastmail wasn't end-to-end encrypted to begin with, so laws requiring backdoors have no relevance to Fastmail. And every civilized country has some legal method to compel information from companies relating to significant criminal activity.
- sneak 5y ago
  You're right, of course, but this simply switches the "reason not to use Fastmail" from "based in Australia" to "not e2e encrypted and can rat out your entire email history".
  - barbazoo 5y ago
    I don't see e2ee email happening anytime soon. The technology is just not very user friendly. And honestly, without e2ee, I don't put much trust into providers like Protonmail either because at some point the email is coming in as plain text and that's where one could always siphon it off.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    I would consider that a valid position to take! I don't feel my threat model justifies the limitations of E2E email, but many do. I am not trying to tell you to use Fastmail, just that fear of doing so explicitly because of Australian law is silly. ;)

spansoa 5y ago

There's a few alternatives to this: https://www.spreadprivacy.com/introducing-email-protection-beta/ https://www.spreadprivacy.com/introducing-email-protection-b... (beta only) https://simplelogin.io/ https://simplelogin.io/ https://anonaddy.com/ https://anonaddy.com/ I know there are plenty of others, but I use all the above and found them reliable and intuitive.

rPlayer6554 5y ago

As much as this is a cool feature, the distoypian anti-privacy laws Australia [0] (where Fastmail is based) prevents me from ever using their service. I know it isn't their fault but it has to be said. [0] https://www.iflscience.com/policy/australias-new-police-powers-allow-them-to-control-social-media-accounts-delete-data/ https://www.iflscience.com/policy/australias-new-police-powe... [1]

BugWatch 5y ago
It was the same, in my case. I was considering them for an email service, and then that happened.

ziml77 5y ago

Literally 2 days ago was wanting something like this to use alongside a privacy.com card! This is great to have and since the addresses are fastmail addresses, they're unblockable unlike various throwaway address services that play a cat-and-mouse game.

m-p-3 5y ago

I suggested this feature as a paid option to Bitwarden, hopefully they'll add this. For now I'm using Firefox Relay, but the 5-email limit (without a plan for more) is a showstopper.

kmfrk 5y ago

Does this also work for existing accounts within 1Password with e-mail addresses attached? I can't find anything in the 1Password interface to change a login for current accounts. All the language makes it sound like it's only upon login/account creation. I guess the fallback is just manually creating one in Fastmail, but it's a bummer if you can't just do it from one place in 1Password.

LilBytes 5y ago

Amazing feature. Couldn't be happier as a 1P and Fastmail user. Thanks!

tomlong 5y ago

I use fastmail's * alias against a custom domain, to achieve a similar thing. It forwards mail at any address to my normal email, then I just pick a name on signup, ie. hn@emaildomain.com. I have registered a domain just for the purpose which doesn't have my name in it or host any websites or anything else which can be used to leak my identity with a whois privacy guard service. It has the dual advantages of being guessable by me if something goes tits up with my self-hosted bitwarden, and I can eyeball who has leaked my email address on incoming spam.

MontagFTB 5y ago

Is this available for the permanent 1Password 7 license, or only for subscription customers?

meigwilym 5y ago

I wonder if this is tied in with haveibeenpwned.com? Compromised emails could almost be deleted automatically.

vishnugupta 5y ago

I'm using Fastmail's alias to serve the same purpose. It seems Masked Email is useful primarily if you have 1Password account as a deeper integration to auto-fil email addresses during sign-up.

SamWhited 5y ago

I briefly got very excited about this since I'm a fastmail user, but apparently I need a 1Password account too? I don'nt understand why that would be, Fastmail is the email provider, they are the ones who can create random aliases. I don't use 1Password (they're terrible in my previous experiences with them and I prefer something that vaguely operates on principals I like), so why should I be forced to give them my data just to use a feature of my email provider? I'm sure there's something important I'm missing here.

jakelazaroff 5y ago
It looks the 1Password integration is only for convenience. You can still go into Fastmail settings and create masked email addresses manually.
- SamWhited 5y ago
  That's great news! The post made it sound like you had to have a 1Password account, but now that it's showing up in my account it doesn't appear to be the case. Thanks!
lucideer 5y ago
2nd confirmation here: I'm a Fastmail user who's never had a 1Password account and I seem to be able to create masked emails in settings no problem.

focom 5y ago

Would be great to have it with bitwarden.com as well

alexwasserman 5y ago

Interestingly Fastmail have also allowed subdomains in addition to name+blah@domain.com routing, to make it harder to guess your "real" email. So you can sign up for new companies with random@someservice.mydomain.com and have it still route into our inbox. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060591053-Plus-addressing-and-subdomain-addressing https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060591053-Plu... I've done this a bunch in past, but wish it was easier to go back and change existing services. Also found a couple that reject sign-ups when their name is in the username part. As a user of both 1Pass and Fastmail for years, this is a really neat addition. Next I'd love 1Pass to generate random phone numbers to use that I can recall quickly for things like supermarket checkout where I need to enter a number to get their discounts, and I don't want to use my real one. Doesn't even need to be a genuine phone line, just a 10 digit code.

jayknight 5y ago
Kroger, at least, let's you change your "alternate ID" to any 10 digit number that isn't used by someone else. Just log in to the web site and change it.
35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
My personal solution to this problem was: * register a pseudonymous domain and use Fastmail to forward it in to my real email * use Twilio + a little TwiML to register a real phone number in my area code & have all messages/calls forward to my cell This let me establish trust domains: when I share my email with an untrusted entity they get companyname@mypseudonym.com & the phone number I registered before. I always have the ability to know where the communications come from & can quickly cut off junk/spam at either source[1]. And if a company is trustworthy I could always move them to my real domain/phone if I so wanted. [1]: Phone is obviously harder as there's only one number, but legitimate companies seldom if ever call – their junk is from a consistent text source that's easier to block. My burner & my clean numbers get about the same amount of autodialer calls, sadly.
the_other 5y ago
> Also found a couple that reject sign-ups when their name is in the username part. This is how you know not to use that company.

YPPH 5y ago

I have always wanted to go down the one email per service method but it seemed to cumbersome to manage. Looks like it may be feasible now. As someone who uses Fastmail and 1Password, thank you for posting this. Currently really impressed with both services, the prospect of linking the two and obtaining unique email addresses is even better!

Normal_gaussian 5y ago
I've been doing it with fastmail for a long time (I used another provider before them as well). I really don't see that the 1P integration changes much (I don't use 1P though, I use Bitwarden and KeepassXC, so maybe I'm missing something?).
mulmen 5y ago
I do it but you need a client that supports it in replies. The Fastmail web UI allows you to send from the custom email address. Clients like iOS Mail demand you configure an account-per-sender rather than letting you add an arbitrary address to the from: line. I end up in a situation where if I don't pay close attention I leak my "main" email address.

brongondwana 5y ago

And of course it's all just JMAP under the hood! ["MaskedEmail/set", { "create" : { "k1" : { "state" : "enabled", "description" : "Hacker News", "url" : "https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com" } } }, "R1"] returns: ["MaskedEmail/set", { "created" : { "k1" : { "id" : "masked-123456", "email" : "flighty.emu5803@mydomain.example", "createdAt" : "2021-09-28T14:19:19Z" } } }, "R1"] Very simple to work with.

ishanjain28 5y ago
Oh wow. I knew fastmail was building JMAP but I didn't think to look at JMAP when I was trying to find fastmail's API that can be used to integrate this in other services. This is really nice compared to the SOAP/XML monstrosity I stumbled upon, heh.

tmslnz 5y ago

Like many others in this thread, I have been using alias-to-subdomain remapping with Fastmail since time immemorial. Having this trick automated to some degree can be convenient for less geeky or fastidious users than I :) Other than thinning my online identity to make any assumed attempts at correlation harder, in a couple of cases over the years I had the pleasure to "Gotcha!" companies selling (or losing) their users' email addresses. In other cases I also received unrelated spam on addresses as a result of undisclosed or less-publicised security breaches.

yepthatsreality 5y ago

This feature is already available without 1Password account linked to Fastmail. You can already create email addresses with a random name linked to one of hundred or so domain names and have it forwarded to your email. I believe this page just details the automated 1Password integration.

stayfrosty420 5y ago

What a brilliant feature. May consider using fastmail now

cosentiyes 5y ago

It'd be great to see this as a somewhat generic feature for generating usernames and email aliases in 1password. I don't use fastmail and I'm not particularly interested in switching at this point in time. I would love it if 1password had a hook where you provide your custom domain and it generates a random address according to some schema defined using the current password-style configurator. I assume that the current fastmail limitation is because fastmail is ensuring that there is no conflict with existing aliases (which seems like it should be very low probability)?

DASD 5y ago

Sounds great! Congratulations on the new offering. As a sidenote, when Fastmail blogs, can you put that on a subdomain? Webmail interface is really sluggish right now which I assume is an effect of this news.

hcurtiss 5y ago

Looks great, but a bummer for Fastmail subscribers who use Lastpass. I can't imagine the nightmare of switching my family from Lastpass to 1Password. Password managers truly do create a lot of intertia. Though we're all Apple, at least I have the family using a third-party password manager in case we one day change hardware providers. For now, I suppose I'll have to stick with manually creating aliases.

saint-loup 5y ago
I'm in the same situation, but with Bitwarden and not Lastpass. It's more of a hassle, but you can go to Settings > Masked Mails and generate mails as you wish.

sneak 5y ago

Use your own domain for this! Being locked in to a provider domain means you can never easily switch from them. It's a form of vendor lock-in. (Fastmail supports using your own domain, of course, but they also don't encrypt at rest in a way not readable to Fastmail, so you should avoid them.) I wrote up a step by step howto for switching over to your own domain name: https://sneak.berlin/20201029/stop-emailing-like-a-rube/ https://sneak.berlin/20201029/stop-emailing-like-a-rube/

romwell 5y ago

FWIW, Yahoo! (of all places!) has had this feature for many years. You can create an arbitrary number of disposable email addresses, keeping up to 50 of them active at a time. You choose a prefix, and then your disposables have the form prefix-<whatever you want>@yahoo.com.

93po 5y ago

This is great. I have hundreds of alias accounts in my fastmail for this exact purpose. It's really satisfying just making emails bounce back when they start sending spam. I also identified a service I used that was selling my email to straight up scammers/spammers. I wish the block option for masked aliases was bouncing the emails and not sending them to trash.

rwojo 5y ago

Something not mentioned much is that you can respond to these messages that come in through a Masked Email, and your identity is hidden on the outbound messages as well. They seamlessly integrate with the sender identity feature in Fastmail making it very clear that you are replying from the Masked Email. From a quick analysis on the headers, I don't see anything that leaks who your real identity is, but of course Fastmail knows and could reveal that if legal reasons exist. Overall smooth feature along with the ability to use a custom domain for portability (to a less sophisticated wildcard setup, or another provider).

shafyy 5y ago

This is great, but why does Fastmail need 1Password to do this? Just a marketing collab thing?

dannysu 5y ago

@Fastmail: Please let me delete a masked email after creating it. Thanks. I just tried it with my own domain via the Fastmail iOS app. There doesn’t seem to be a way to delete things. I do like that I can attach notes and have an easy block button. I might start using it instead of my existing wildcard setup, but need delete. Using unique email per service is really great. I detected Zenni Optical either had a security breach or sold my information because of the unique email I used.

czottmann 5y ago
Go to Fastmail → Settings → Masked Email. There, click the "Edit" link next to the address you want to delete. On the following page, there's a big red "Delete" button. Works for me. :) Update: looks like deletion only works when using the website, though.
- dannysu 5y ago
  Ah thanks. Currently out so didn’t check the desktop website. Hope the delete button can work on mobile too. This is a great feature. I’m glad this will bring it to more people.

tangoalpha 5y ago

This would be a large personal disaster and a full time personal project if the service provider decides to shut down the service. One would have to crawl through all services they have signed up for to update the email addresses. Instead get a domain. Configure email as well as a catch all address. Example anything@yourdomain.com would reach name@yourdomain.com which you use as your primary email address. And say, if I am signing up for Netflix, I would give the email as netflix@yourdomain.com. The email automatically reaches my single primary inbox with the catch-all behavior. And if I find a lot of spam to netflix@yourdomain.com, I know which service is leaking my email address and I can quickly block all emails sent to netflix@yourdomain.com

omarhaneef 5y ago
Okay, you convinced me that this is a good idea. I can get a domain pretty easily but I hate the idea of managing my own email. Do you recommend a particular provider? Zoho or something?
- ignoramous 5y ago
  Ideally, one would use me+uber@domain.tld / me+amzn@domain.tld / me+apple@domain.tld but then the identity me@domain.tld isn't masked. If you prefer email forwarding, then: Cloudflare announced a free email-forwarding service just yesterday [0]. Not sure if they provide unlimited email forwarding rules. Other domain registrars like domains.google and namecheap.com also support email forwarding at no-cost. If you prefer a managed mailbox, then: Zoho Mail, Fresh Mail, AWS WorkMail et al are nice if you'd also like to send emails using the address you sign up with. Other than that, if you're technically inclined, then have SES plonk incoming emails in to S3 [1] Be careful registering domain.tld without whois shield and/or with TLDs that require registrant to publicly reveal ownership (like .in) See also: simplelogin.io and anonaddy.com [0] https://archive.is/BEKi7 https://archive.is/BEKi7 [1] https://archive.is/2iQCN https://archive.is/2iQCN
- judge2020 5y ago
  Many registrars offer catch-all forwarding (to your free personal email), which would be your best bet if you don't expect to need to send email. If you can afford $6/mo, Google Workspace isn't bad, there's generally better security and it grants you a lot of control over your account's settings (and will remove ads from the Gmail app on your phone, even when only looking at your @gmail account inbox). Otherwize, Zoho works, but now costs $12/user/year (it used to be free) so ymmv. Great if you were planning on pure POP/IMAP usage anyways.

dannysu 5y ago

@Fastmail: Another request. If I’m using my own domain, could the email generated be simpler? Instead of “some.thing1234@”, I’d rather just have “thing1234@“. Update: hmmm… looks like I can’t initiate an email with masked email though. I can set up my wildcard to do that in the more rare case when I need to initiate email.

purplejacket 5y ago

Fastmail: Couldn't you give a 2 or 3 paragraph summary of your service instead of this silly "easy to read" format that seems all the rage for web pages over the last 10+ years? I mean, fastmail of all companies should get this. I have to come to hacker news to actually understand what is being offered, rather than some glitzy marketing haiku that could mean any number of things.

nephanth 5y ago

Some time ago, a site called randomail proposed the same service, but it closed... The problem is that registration forms often blocked randomail addresses, probably because the domain was on spam blocklists

replwoacause 5y ago

How is this different than user aliases? I am already making heavy use of those and this seems to do the same thing.

throwaway81523 5y ago

This looks like a cross between Mailinator and Fastmail. Great idea, but why is 1password involved? I don't want to sign up with yet another damn service, and I'm happy using my browser password store (or email client API key) to access fastmail without needing 1password. I don't understand why services like 1password even exist. They just increase your computer's attack surface. Am I missing something?

thiht 5y ago

Does the 1password integration use an open Fastmail API that any password manager could theoretically use, or is it a deal they have exclusively with 1password? I’d love this feature with Bitwarden.

jackvalentine 5y ago

I love Fastmail, I love 1password the two most important services in my life that I can pay for and the most satisfying. I've just registered a new random domain to use for these aliases to further separate my identity from email leaks.

glumreaper 5y ago

I'm surprised spamgourmet.com has not been mentioned - created-on-use forwarding addresses with a built-in self destruct. It is a superb solution.