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I use canaries. I point a dozen domains to fastmail and another dozen to my self hosted email servers. Each have aliases that are mapped to vendors but do not
by LinuxBender 2y ago
I use canaries. I point a dozen domains to fastmail and another dozen to my self hosted email servers. Each have aliases that are mapped to vendors but do not have the vendor name as some vendors are getting upset at this practice and calling it fraud. If I start getting garbage on that alias, I notify the vendor. In most cases they will give me a boiler plate response and then I delete the alias. If they are snarky I create a reject rule with my own snark that also explains the emails for that vendor have been either sold or compromised. This is to let people buying email addresses know they bought a dirty list as some of the modern bots have some telemetry.
- unsnap_biceps 2y agowoah, what do you mean by calling it fraud? Have you actually had companies come after you legally due to an email alias?
- supriyo-biswas 2y agoConversations caused by the odd looking email address can often get very nasty. This is why I also like how iCloud does with their hide my mail feature; there’s nothing suspicious about the email you give out.
- landgenoot 2y agoIt only has to be unique. It's easy to find out who you gave it to by looking at the very first email. ROT13 or the date in base36 (to keep it short) might help when you need to spell your email address over the phone. Today is oaf@example.com.
- nzach 2y agoHiding information behind a non-standard encoding is a really smart idea. I will update my technique to use incorporate this method, thanks!
- speakspokespok 2y agoUnix epoch `date +%s` still only requires 6 characters. I really like your idea.
- rootusrootus 2y agoI have not had anyone accuse me of fraud yet, but I have had email addresses rejected because they too obviously contained the company name in them.
- sunaookami 2y agoSamsung does this for example! You can't register a Samsung account if your email contains the word "Samsung"...
- eddd-ddde 2y agoI think this might be a lazy attempt to protect users from scammers trying to impersonate the company. There are people that will read an email from "SamsungCeo@gmail.com" and think it's actually from the owner of the company...
- seabass-labrax 2y agoI would venture a guess that there is an equal proportion of company executives who would think that creating and using an email address like 'CompanyCeo@gmail.com' was completely fine - an awareness of internet scams is not correlated with business acumen!
- jeeva 2y agoAlso frustrating when a company adds it after you register, e.g. Spotify allowed me to use spotify@ at one point, now I can't register anything with that word in .
- dblohm7 2y agoI'm not GP, but I've had transitions denied while attempting to purchase something because the retailer's code flagged my email address as suspicious because it contained their name in it.
- thoughtpalette 2y agoJust another data point, I've had the same issue with some vendors.
- al_borland 2y agoI had this happen as well. I responded with a long rant, which apparently proved my humanity.
- kmoser 2y agoHaven't had that happen to me, but I did get asked by a clueless support rep from $VERY_BIG_MULTINATIONAL_CORPORATION whether I was also an employee due to their company name appearing in my email address. (Coincidentally I used to consult for that company.) Long story short I set them straight rather than trying to parlay their ignorance to my advantage. The most shocking thing was that I was calling them regarding an issue in which they required me to prove my identity, and yet the person I spoke with didn't seem to be well versed in security measures. Also: I use a separate alias for every company (and sometimes individual) I deal with. In the 25 or so years I've been doing this, so far I'm up to over 1,000 aliases.
- speakspokespok 2y agoLinode did this to me.
- maeil 2y agoI've always knew at least some companies would do that so I just use slight variations on their names. Never had an issue.
- freetanga 2y agoI do this too (3 domains, Fastmail) For specific vendors where I am at the shop, I just make up an alias email with their name in it. For apps, services, I configured bitwarden to create email aliases on Fastmail, so they are linked to a service.