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Boss move that I learned under great difficulty: a new temporary gmail alias for every jobsearch.
by HocusLocus 9mo ago
Boss move that I learned under great difficulty: a new temporary gmail alias for every jobsearch.
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo agoHm interesting, do you want to tell why this helps out a lot perhaps?
- HocusLocus 9mo ago;) I was a by-invitation-beta in 2004, trust me. Even then spammers knew about the +1234 trick too. The earliest throwaway forwarders suffered from explosive growth and spam netblocks and their queue times varied greatly. The golden age of Viagra and recruiters selling prospect lists to randos. I retreated to gmail for the SPOP and because my original address was Tech Contact for 100+ domains from 1994-2000. Thousands a week. If I was smart I'd have used it as a honeypot to feed a spam blocking service.
- makeitdouble 9mo agoDon't you get these spam mails either way ? I have a separate email I only use to get government and public services (gas, electricity) stuff and it still receives a few hundreds of spam a week. At this point I kinda feel whitelisting the mail I want to read is the only sane option, so getting hundreds or thousands of spam mail makes little difference, while managing a portofolio of addresses is a chore.
- pram 9mo agoiCloud Hide My Email is pretty good for this.
- njuhhktlrl 9mo agomyjobapplicationhasbeendenied-1582-timesalready@gmail.com will certainly end well.
- sans_souse 9mo agoStay tuned I have a pretty cool project I plan on launching very soon. It takes the email alias to the next level, using them as meta tags to actually allow users to trace the source of shady data exchanges. I'm working on the guide and I'm hoping to actually start a community effort here to hold companies accountable for responsible use of PII
- iamben 9mo agoI'm interested. How does it differ from using: name+service@gmail.com or service@myowndomain.com ...to figure out where the spam originated?
- loloquwowndueo 9mo agoEverybody knows name+something@ maps to name@ so it’s trivial for bad actors to strip the plus part and just spam you directly, losing the per-correspondent distinction.
- homebrewer 9mo agoWhich is covered by GP's second suggestion. I add short random password-like strings to these aliases to thwart spammers who might be trying obvious aliases, turning e.g paypal@example.com into paypal.nsi873g@example.com
- loloquwowndueo 9mo agoI probably didn’t explain myself well. On Gmail foo+bar@gmail.com is an “alias” for foo@gmail.com. So if you give someone foo+randomstring@gmail.com hoping that will help you map random string to that particular sender, you’re fucked - because anyone who sees foo+randomstring@gmail.com knows it’s an alias for foo@gmail.com, they can just email that directly and bypass your cleverness. If you’re using a sane alias provider like you described, then it’s likely not an issue.
- deleted 9mo ago
- raddan 9mo agoYou can take this to an extreme (like I do) and use a different email address for every party with whom you communicate. It makes it rather obvious who leaked your email address, and also easy to shut them out (looking at you ActBlue!). It also leads to some amusing personal interactions. I once rebooked a cancelled flight on JetBlue at the ticket counter. When the agent saw my email she said “wow, you must really like JetBlue.” I just nodded but I was laughing inside because it’s definitely the opposite!
- Dusseldorf 9mo agoI do this as well, and occasionally people get confused and think I work for the company I'm interacting with (enterprise@myname.com is close enough to myname@enterprise.com, I guess.) I usually don't bother to correct them, in case it gets me better treatment :)
- fragmede 9mo agoThe problem is that's guessable. I add a nonce/salt/bit of random chars; enterprise_jeje38@example.com to compensate.
- throwaway808081 9mo agoYou're dealing with a different type of actor if that's necessary.
- fragmede 9mo agothe problem is you don't know which actor you're going to be dealing with so you have to start off on that foot with everybody.
- Terretta 9mo agoThis is how iCloud's "Hide My Email" (suggested to you by Safari at online account creation or filling out any email field basically) works. And then it remembers those random chars for that domain. Also ensures the email delivers to you.
- vunderba 9mo agoIt might be an iCloud+ feature only, but if you're on a Mac - you've already got the ability to generate virtual email addresses on the fly. https://support.apple.com/en-us/105078 https://support.apple.com/en-us/105078
- wafflebot 9mo agoI love this feature and wish something like it would come to Gmail. I can't rely on iCloud Mail anymore due to its overly aggressive silent spam filtering. Not great if you're trying to log into an account, and you can't receive the recovery emails for that account.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo agoYou don’t have to use an iCloud account as a target for your real email address or even for your Apple account.
- anonymars 9mo agoThat's funny, as it's the same reason I moved off Gmail. Most egregious was a reply to my message ending up in spam, and the other party was someone also on Gmail
- schrodinger 9mo agoAs a hiring manager, I just want to give you a heads up that we are getting tons of fake applicants—like 5–10%—that end up being a real person on a video chat isn’t some AI assistant that uses a teleprompter interface to tell them what to say. Usually by that point you catch them, but your recruiter screen might not etc. So now all the main HR tools are using “age of email” as one possible signal to detect fraud. I’m sure you’re fine if your email is real (in my experience they all resolve to Onvoy LLC instead of a real cell provider), but just something to watch out for. Wouldn’t want to get overlooked because your email is brand new. (If you’re curious about motive as I was, since of course it’ll be obvious when you start—in a lot of cases it’s that procuring an offer letter helps you obtain a visa.)
- baobun 9mo agoHow would you determine or estimate "age of email"? It isn't really public info. Does it imply that you are by now expected to be doxxed by data brokers to not be judged suspicious? > I’m sure you’re fine if your email is real (in my experience they all resolve to Onvoy LLC instead of a real cell provider), Email is expected to be resolving to "a real cell provider"? Wut?
- dilyevsky 9mo ago> How would you determine or estimate "age of email"? It isn't really public info. Does it imply that you are by now expected to be doxxed by data brokers to not be judged suspicious? There are services that let you do that. Imperfect ofc as they rely on data brokers like you said. You can thank all the spammers and carders for that
- phyzome 9mo agoWhat does it mean for an email address to "resolve" to a cell company?
- schrodinger 9mo agoEdit: “I’m sure you’re fine if your email is real” should be “…phone number” (It’s too late to amend my comment)
- joshribakoff 9mo agoI switched to fastmail, it imported all my gmail mail quickly, and it gives me virtual emails.