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The blatant user-hostility aside, not all mailservers / email providers use plus-aliasing, so "normalizing" email addresses in this way can and will cause email
by yellowapple 4y ago
The blatant user-hostility aside, not all mailservers / email providers use plus-aliasing, so "normalizing" email addresses in this way can and will cause emails to go nowhere - or worse, to the wrong person.
This sort of "normalization", being both just plain evil and just plain stupid, is grounds for me to never touch a system attempting it with a 10 foot pole - and grounds for me to apply the same treatment to such a system's creators. If you are simultaneously too evil and too stupid to understand that email address normalization is a horrible idea that should never ever be done, then I want nothing to do with you. If you think that comes across as rude and uncivil, well, so does mangling the email address I supply (and violating multiple IETF RFCs in the process) for the sake of surveillance and spam.
- Xylakant 4y agoIt’s not a problem for email since they never intend to send an email to the normalized address. All they want to use it for is to connect two separate identities. The worst case from their perspective is that two actually unrelated people share one advertising profile - I’d think they consider that an acceptable loss.
- yellowapple 4y ago> The worst case from their perspective is that two actually unrelated people share one advertising profile Meaning that I get spammed with AARP ads everywhere I go because my email address gets "normalized" to be the same as Grandpa George... and we both get spammed with Bad Dragon ads everywhere we go because both our email addresses get "normalized" to be the same as Dildo Daddy Dave. Fuck that and the horse it rode in on. Targeted advertising is a blight on society.
- Xylakant 4y ago> Fuck that and the horse it rode in on. Targeted advertising is a blight on society. I agree. But I doubt they care.