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I'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 ago
  Everybody 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 ago
    Which 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 ago
      I 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
        [deleted]
• buu700 9mo ago
  > service@myowndomain.com Just be aware that this may be very confusing to customer support agents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32475178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32475178
  • rsync 9mo ago
    FWIW, I have been using the companyname@mydomain.com auto-alias for many years now and I've never had it challenged nor rejected by a human or a machine.
    • chrismorgan 9mo ago
      I’ve also been doing it for quite a few years, and I think I had it rejected by a machine once, and I had it questioned by a human once. I’ve had way more problems from systems that think TLDs are two or three characters (which has never been true).
• sans_souse 9mo ago
  In the latter specifically it doesn't differ except for the specific methodology and what we do with the results.