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Archive Link [1] And my own two cents based on my experience: I would suggest people use email canaries which are simply email aliases that map to ones email

Archive Link [1] And my own two cents based on my experience: I would suggest people use email canaries which are simply email aliases that map to ones email account. If a site refuses to accept that email address that is a red flag to stay far away from that business. My suggestion may appear redundant as they do mention in the article to create many email addresses but those email address examples they give are bad. If for example your email is related to Netflix, do not put netflix in the email address. That is a dead give-away that you are using a canary. Companies are wising up to this. Instead add a comment in the email alias notes if using a paid provider such as Fastmail or in the mapping file as a comment if self hosting email. [1] - https://archive.ph/c8Oef https://archive.ph/c8Oef

hgsgm 4y ago
Isn't "unique domain name" also a giveaway that it's a canary?
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  It can be. In fact even if a person uses a whois-privacy service for their domain there is almost always a unique identifier for that persons registrar account and that can also be used for tracking. Sites such as fastmail allow adding aliases using one of their several domains with the one downside it is harder to find a short unique name. I have one encoded into my profile here on HN.
jononomo 4y ago
Can you recommend a service that makes it easy to create email canaries? Or should I just create two dozen gmail addresses and cycle through them? Also, if I do create two dozen gmail addresses, won't Google just figure this out because of the forwarding rules and keep me under surveillance anyway?
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  Can you recommend a service that makes it easy to create email canaries? Fastmail is a commonly used provider for this but you can probably find others that also allow email aliases. Each provider usually has a limit of aliases per account. won't Google just figure this out Google will see your IP address and Google tracking cookies in Gmail to know it is you. I can't even guess what Google does with that use case these days.

hgsgm 4y ago

Isn't "unique domain name" also a giveaway that it's a canary?

LinuxBender 4y ago
It can be. In fact even if a person uses a whois-privacy service for their domain there is almost always a unique identifier for that persons registrar account and that can also be used for tracking. Sites such as fastmail allow adding aliases using one of their several domains with the one downside it is harder to find a short unique name. I have one encoded into my profile here on HN.

jononomo 4y ago

Can you recommend a service that makes it easy to create email canaries? Or should I just create two dozen gmail addresses and cycle through them? Also, if I do create two dozen gmail addresses, won't Google just figure this out because of the forwarding rules and keep me under surveillance anyway?

LinuxBender 4y ago
Can you recommend a service that makes it easy to create email canaries? Fastmail is a commonly used provider for this but you can probably find others that also allow email aliases. Each provider usually has a limit of aliases per account. won't Google just figure this out Google will see your IP address and Google tracking cookies in Gmail to know it is you. I can't even guess what Google does with that use case these days.