4 ms·
Ask HN: Why do email addresses need a user name?
I was thinking it would be cool to be able to have an email address that is just a domain, for example if I own bobsmith.com why can't I have bobsmith.com as my email address? Why does SMTP require a username, eg bob@bobsmith.com?
- taubek 4y agoRFC 5321 defines the what that address looks like. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321#page-15 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321#page-15
- LinuxBender 4y agoExisting RFC's require an email address. What you are looking for would require a new RFC to have a default address for a domain and of course changes to all MUA's/MTA's. I think the shortest path to make something like this would just be to have an amending RFC that includes a lookup of a specific TXT record if an email address is not present. That TXT record could have a default email address for the domain.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 4y agoAn interesting thought experiment is: 1. How would you make email addresses domain/host agnostic? 2. What would the migration path look like? This would enable portability similar to how you can port a phone number DID between carriers.
- rsclient 4y agoHistorically, when the email protocol was first made [RFC 561](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc561 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc561) in 1973 personal computers were rare and very low power. At the time, hardly anyone owned a computer on their own. That said, might be cool, but good luck getting most apps to accept something without an @ as an email address
- legrande 4y agoYou could always setup a catch-all for `bobsmith.com` and then you can read every e-mail sent to that address, regardless of what username is used.
- idoh 4y agoAs someone who has done this don’t do this. I get so much crap e-mail.
- toast0 4y agoI've done this, and I get way more crap on my gmail account (which I only rarely use, but several people seem unable to remember isn't theirs)
- saluki 4y agoA catch all is great. You can create emails on the fly. ntflx@ disney@ gh@ cf@ it's great for signing up for services or signing up for services for multiple domains at services like CloudFlare, etc. I don't get any spam, that probably depends on the domain, if it was owned previously, occasionally you might get an email intended for someone else. Almost all domains that I have mail for gets a catch all.
- dazc 4y ago'You can create emails on the fly. ntflx@ disney@ gh@ cf@...' Face-palm moment, I've been creating custom account email addresses for ages - never thought of doing it via catch-all.
- lgl 4y agoYou could have also used "plus sign" addressing if your e-mail provider supports it. For example, gmail supports it so if your email is bob@gmail.com you can register for services using bob+something@gmail.com and it will end up on bob's mailbox. While this is useful, please note that this is not as private as a catch-all alternative as one can always infer the actual e-mail address by just removing the plus sign and everything after it while using a catch-all you can completely obfuscate the actual username.