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I do a simplified version of this. I just use a catchall account with Fastmail and then pick email addresses in the domain randomly. If someone abuses the add
by rootusrootus 5y ago
I do a simplified version of this. I just use a catchall account with Fastmail and then pick email addresses in the domain randomly. If someone abuses the address, I block it. I specifically do not use addresses that make it obvious what my strategy is. I end up just using a name and number that would look right at home on gmail.
I'm also not trying to stop tracking, so much as I'm trying to have my own semi-permanent equivalent to mailinator that nobody will recognize as such, that I can use to cut back on the amount of spam I get.
- 3-cheese-sundae 5y agoI used to do it this way too, but got overwhelmed by dictionary attacks.
- b1n 5y agoI've been thinking of a new way to use my email... - Only use one email address: hi@example.com - Always add a filter: hi+hn@example.com - Send all emails without a filter to SPAM Since it's not a common strategy, it is much more likely that spammers remove the +hn before sending an email than add one.
- VTimofeenko 5y agoI have tried this approach. Unfortunately, some services will not accept plus sign in the username no matter what RFC says. On top of that, some services seem to not like seeing the service name in the username. I.e. foo.tld will refuse sending email to mailbox+foo@mydomain.tld.
- JimDabell 5y agoSome mail providers support receiving mail on arbitrary hostnames, so you can set up a wildcard MX record and then use mailbox@foo.example.com instead. This avoids email validation issues with plus addresses, spammers don’t try removing any parts of the hostname, and I think in the many years I have been using it I’ve only run into a problem with including the service name once or possibly twice.
- ricg 5y agoWhich mail providers support this? I'd like to set up something like this. Thanks!
- lloeki 5y agoFastmail, can't recall if assuming you want to achieve something like name+tag@domain it would be name@tag.domain or tag@name.domain (IIRC the latter)
- JimDabell 5y agoYou can do this with Fastmail by going to Settings => Domains => Edit => Routing.
- ricg 5y agoThanks a lot! I'll give it a try.
- paledot 5y agoI do this with ProtonMail. I have it set on a subdomain, though: my regular email is email@example.com, while my account email is hackernews@email.example.com. This avoids the spam sent to asdf@everydomain.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- strboul 5y agoStartMail supports a form of this called as "aliases" with the StartMail domain. https://www.startmail.com/ https://www.startmail.com/ (Disclosure: I work at StartMail.)
- drexlspivey 5y agoAFAIK the only provider that supports that is Fastmail and it kinda defeats the purpose of using your own domain because if you are forced to migrate you are toast.
- Semaphor 5y ago> I.e. foo.tld will refuse sending email to mailbox+foo@mydomain.tld. While I never had that issue, I had Foo’s legal service contact me about using their trademarked name in my email (a short explanation cleared it up)
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoIt is better to use this scheme with an underscore or hyphen as they won't be rejected by incompetents like plus is. name_nospam@blah
- Semaphor 5y agoI actually use tag@example.org.
- quitit 5y agoShopify also flags orders (even if they are fully paid) when the customer's email contains the shop's name. I'm sure their logic is that it helps cut down on fraud. I prefer the system of using a basic abbreviation in the email address to avoid these types of filters but still make the email easily traceable later. Say your name is joe smith and you're buying from Sports Online. Something like Joe_spo_smith@yourdomain.com works well for later confirming whom you gave the address to. I like this approach because one doesn't have to track all of the catch-all emails made on the fly, since finding out who you originally gave that email to is just a matter of searching your past email and noticing that "spo" looks more like those old Sports Online emails and not the new spam from discounted wholesale fancy rugs. Apart from seeing who a company has on-sold your information to (or more rarely had a staff member steal their database), it's also an easy way to see who has been hacked. One other reason not to use something like SportsOnline@yourdomain.com is that some websites exist merely as credential honeypots and those types are usually aware of this approach and will then typically exploit the catch-all for spamming. The shady All on MP3 service was known for doing this. (I'm pretty sure that site existed solely to exploit the fact that most people used the same password for everthing.)
- tlavoie 5y agoSome MTAs (Postfix at least) allows other characters. I use an underscore, which seems universally accepted. For the second problem, there's usually some alternative mangling that would still be unique-enough, or just flee because they seem too aggressive on the data harvesting.
- vmception 5y agowould not recommend not only can you not sign up to many services, customer support can often get confused when you need to email reply to them and you cannot email from your aliased email. they see you as a separate user not in their system, or the wrong person replied to the support ticket, etc.
- mackmgg 5y agoCan you not reply from a user+foo@example.com alias? I use the catchall approach (so just foo@example.com when signing up for foo), but if I need to email customer support I'll just send the email from foo@example.com. I've never tried that with a + in the account though to see if my client supports it.
- rootusrootus 5y agoOn Fastmail, at least, this isn't a big issue. For a catchall account, if I reply to an email[0] it automatically addresses the reply as from the alias. It is editable in place, too, in case I want to give it some other name. [0] In their webmail client, of course
- ohlookabird 5y agoBut why would you not be able to reply with the aliased email? I do this regularly. Of course your mail client needs to support this, but using Mutt this is absolutely no problem (just change the FROM header) and I have heard from other users who use Thunderbird that they can also create new identities (just not as easy on the fly). In fact I wrote a small script for Mutt that would automatically set the correct sender if I reply to an email that contained a wildcard. Works pretty well.
- IAmEveryone 5y agoGmail also ignores the dot. If you choose a 17-character mailbox name, you can use any one of 2^16 different patterns of placing dots between them. Capitalisation could also be used for such a purpose, but may be more likeely to accidentally get stripped.
- mushyhammer 5y agoDots are useful to create new accounts on the same site, but you can’t use it to just tell websites apart (because there’s no label)
- plsbenice34 5y agoFastmail seems to be based in Australia unfortunately, so it is not secure
- Gigachad 5y agoEmail is not secure full stop. Don't do any kind of sensitive conversation over it regardless of where it is hosted.
- heinternets 5y agoEmail using most large providers is transmitted using TLS
- Gigachad 5y agoTLS is unaffected by any government laws. What I assume OP is referencing is a law that makes end to end encryption problematic in Australia but Fastmail has never offered end to end encryption. Neither do most email providers so it doesn't matter.
- astrange 5y agoIf you get a PGP browser extension they all do. It’s pretty inconvenient to use though, sending encrypted attachments and giving the password offline is probably the only thing most people are up to.
- beeboop 5y agoI've been happily using fastmail for years and I think I'm going to be forced to stop. My outbound emails are constantly getting caught in spam and it recently cost me a job offer.
- PascLeRasc 5y agoI really really want to like Fastmail too, but it’s also cost me a job interview when the RSVP didn’t go through.
- withinboredom 5y agoAre your domains set up correctly? That sounds suspiciously like something isn't set up correctly and their client's thought it was spam.
- PascLeRasc 5y agoI use an @fastmail domain. The issue was how they handle RSVPs when your default calendar is an external one. RSVPing from within Fastmail attempted to Accept as my old Gmail address, who wasn't invited to the interview. On the interviewers end it looked like I didn't respond.
- throwawayboise 5y agoIn some contexts, fastmail is viewed as a "throwaway" email provider. I ran into this when I was trying to provision a couple of VMs at a hosting provider. My fastmail email address was rejected. After contacting their support, they said they did not accept "throwaway" email addresses. I had to use a gmail acccount. The irony did not seem apparent to them.
- satyamkapoor 5y agoMy only scare with not using gmail and outlook calendars. However I moved to Zoho for mails and nextcloud self hosted for calendars. For mail delivery I make sure to verify again n again my SPF DKIM is valid or not but it’s a scare still :( Isn’t it so bad that it’s overly hard to move away :(