3 ms·

I had the opposite experience. My google inboxes are full of spam. To catch the companies that were causing all of this spam, I setup a catchall email account

I had the opposite experience. My google inboxes are full of spam. To catch the companies that were causing all of this spam, I setup a catchall email account on a non-google email service and switched every vendor over to a dedicated email address (i.e. hn@foobar.com, homedepot@foobar.com). I expected to catch a tonne of vendors "red handed" sharing my email address, since spam was so prolific on gmail. Nope, I simply don't see spam anymore. In the last four years I've caught exactly one vendor sharing my email address (TicketMaster gave my email address to Warner Brothers). Given I haven't changed anything materially with how I share my email address (it's still in my git commits as code@foobar.com, still on my website as website@foobar.com, etc., if anything I share it more freely now since I know I have control over each inbox), I'm lead to strongly believe GMail has a unique spam problem. Dealing with GMail's spam problem isn't worth my time. That is amplified by the risk of me getting locked out of an email account. I have one Google account with files and emails dating back to grade school I can no longer access and no approach to "recover my account" has worked in the last 5 years - I've even paid Google for support to have someone tell me there was nothing they could do. Google is a massive liability for me. They are a huge risk trusting them with anything that doesn't have a dedicated customer support team, a large part of their business model is to waste my time instead of charging me $$ for services rendered, and they do a pretty poor job of maintaining a level of quality in their products like GMail. Whenever I have to deal with Google I get the distinct feeling that they consider their time infinitely more valuable than mine. I don't like doing business with people who are willing to waste my time like that.

hnbear 4y ago
I do something very similar, and have a similar result - almost no cross-sharing/selling of addresses. The two sources I have: - Leaks - Guesses - eg. webmaster@domain.com - Kickstarter Kickstarter gives over your email to projects, and now I get get lots of kickstarter type spam where it's clear projects have shared it out. It's annoying. My fault for using a real email with kickstarter years ago. I'm pretty sure all the spam I get on my original account (20 year old email, first@firstlast.com) are also more leak related than anything else. That email has been around for so long, and is in a lot of leaked cred dumps. Whenever there's a new dump I get a small spam uptick. I've been segregating passwords for several years, but nothing like the age of my original one true email. I recently bought a whole new anonymous domain too, to keep non-personal email off my personal domain (it's firstnamelastname.com). It's fun to have a second domain and totally unique emails per vendor, but doesn't seem to do much. I suspect this is also a volume/value thing for spammers. Everyone has a gmail so search/guess/spam those and it's easy. Individually targeted attacks on domains with very small address lists aren't worth it, and almost worth removing from your spam attack because someone with a small custom domain isn't likely to fall for it. Similar to the delivery typos approach of selecting for people who aren't sensitive/cautious to correct language. I find Fastmail does a really good job at detecting spam in general too.
JamesLeonis 4y ago
I don't doubt your experience, but I've had the same pattern (gmail.com email spammed to hell, custom domain -> no spam) except that I'm in a grandfathered Google Workspaces account. I also do the custom email trick, and I'm very liberal about handing out those (makes remembering accounts easier as well), but no dice. I'm convinced that companies filter out custom domain email addresses when they share and spam user data.

hnbear 4y ago

I do something very similar, and have a similar result - almost no cross-sharing/selling of addresses. The two sources I have: - Leaks - Guesses - eg. webmaster@domain.com - Kickstarter Kickstarter gives over your email to projects, and now I get get lots of kickstarter type spam where it's clear projects have shared it out. It's annoying. My fault for using a real email with kickstarter years ago. I'm pretty sure all the spam I get on my original account (20 year old email, first@firstlast.com) are also more leak related than anything else. That email has been around for so long, and is in a lot of leaked cred dumps. Whenever there's a new dump I get a small spam uptick. I've been segregating passwords for several years, but nothing like the age of my original one true email. I recently bought a whole new anonymous domain too, to keep non-personal email off my personal domain (it's firstnamelastname.com). It's fun to have a second domain and totally unique emails per vendor, but doesn't seem to do much. I suspect this is also a volume/value thing for spammers. Everyone has a gmail so search/guess/spam those and it's easy. Individually targeted attacks on domains with very small address lists aren't worth it, and almost worth removing from your spam attack because someone with a small custom domain isn't likely to fall for it. Similar to the delivery typos approach of selecting for people who aren't sensitive/cautious to correct language. I find Fastmail does a really good job at detecting spam in general too.

JamesLeonis 4y ago

I don't doubt your experience, but I've had the same pattern (gmail.com email spammed to hell, custom domain -> no spam) except that I'm in a grandfathered Google Workspaces account. I also do the custom email trick, and I'm very liberal about handing out those (makes remembering accounts easier as well), but no dice. I'm convinced that companies filter out custom domain email addresses when they share and spam user data.