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I owned and ran my own email domain for a long time. Initially on my own hardware for fun, then a VPS, then GSuite, then Fastmail. That's over around 20 years.

by hnbear 3y ago

I owned and ran my own email domain for a long time. Initially on my own hardware for fun, then a VPS, then GSuite, then Fastmail. That's over around 20 years. So, it wasn't planned - it evolved. Somewhere in the Fastmail era I was reading their docs around wildcarding and thought I'd try it out. My primary domain is my name though, so for extra privacy (anality) I bought another that has no link to me in the name. There are still gaps in it. e.g. any merchant site still needs my physical address, and plenty need my cell number. But, generally, it's just an attempt to minimize a digital footprint and see what privacy I can get. That and just why not? I self-host enough stuff, that I see this as another aspect of the same mentality - having a little more control. It's not perfect security, it's not completely clean. Hopefully it's enough to get me out of the easy target bucket though.

dogman144 3y ago
Makes sense, seems like this setup still has the same issues I brought up, but good to know others are sorting through the same issue. I spent a good while reading about adtech from the practitioner side (i.e. adtech devs) vs. from the privacy side, and it was illuminating. Basically, the fears of privacy advocates get laid out in plain "this is a great feature for user correlation" speak, without any of the feature-masking used when adtech discusses it in privacy terms with privacy-conscious audiences. In short, my takeaway from that research was it only takes 1x merchant or infra provider which can correlate a "masked" domain/VOIP number/PO box with something IRL of yours to basically undo the whole privacy effort. Without ironclad knowledge the vendor doesn't sell data (which is hard to get), it's as good as safely assuming the data got sold (or the pixel in the webpage did it, and so on). Tough to think through! I think LLC'ing ones life, if in the US, is the only way to truly do it or get a reasonably high guarantee. You'd get corporate privacy guarantees which are unfortunately stronger than individual privacy guarantees in the states.

by hnbear 3y ago

dogman144 3y ago

Makes sense, seems like this setup still has the same issues I brought up, but good to know others are sorting through the same issue. I spent a good while reading about adtech from the practitioner side (i.e. adtech devs) vs. from the privacy side, and it was illuminating. Basically, the fears of privacy advocates get laid out in plain "this is a great feature for user correlation" speak, without any of the feature-masking used when adtech discusses it in privacy terms with privacy-conscious audiences. In short, my takeaway from that research was it only takes 1x merchant or infra provider which can correlate a "masked" domain/VOIP number/PO box with something IRL of yours to basically undo the whole privacy effort. Without ironclad knowledge the vendor doesn't sell data (which is hard to get), it's as good as safely assuming the data got sold (or the pixel in the webpage did it, and so on). Tough to think through! I think LLC'ing ones life, if in the US, is the only way to truly do it or get a reasonably high guarantee. You'd get corporate privacy guarantees which are unfortunately stronger than individual privacy guarantees in the states.