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Use <service>@<yourdomain> as your email address when signing up, and check the To header when receiving emails. And/or, long-press or right-click on any link
by layer8 10mo ago
Use <service>@<yourdomain> as your email address when signing up, and check the To header when receiving emails.
And/or, long-press or right-click on any link to inspect the linked domain.
- lightandlight 10mo agoI often go one step futher by appending a short random identifier, `{service}.{id}@{domain}`, to make it harder to guess (in case someone learned of my email address policy). I created a little GTK program to help: https://github.com/LightAndLight/gen-alias https://github.com/LightAndLight/gen-alias
- layer8 10mo agoYes, it’s really <f(service, rand())>.
- zahlman 10mo agoWhat fraction of people do you suppose actually have a <yourdomain> to do this with? Even some highly technically inclined people (like myself) can be entirely ignorant of the process. It's not as if consumer ISPs provide the service.
- roboror 10mo agoSub-addressing (doing tag+handle@domain.com) is supported by many email services but + may be flagged as an illegal character.
- Terretta 10mo agoat least hotmail, gmail, apple's various mail, though with apple just using hide my email is that whole idea fully and beautifully automated for normies
- layer8 10mo agoThe process isn’t difficult and worth acquainting yourself with.
- epistasis 10mo agoIf you don't control your own domain fully, almost all email services let you do: user+servicetag@domain.com And have it go to user@domain.com with the servicetag still in the To: field. At least, I have never encountered a problem with this.
- cheschire 10mo agoAnd then the spammers (or other illegitimate source) just add this to their processing… ^([^@+]+)\+[^@]*(@.*)$
- epistasis 10mo agoThe use case here is using a unique email address to help verify the sender of the email, it's not connected to spam usage.
- cheschire 10mo agoSo you’re suggesting the sender use the + modifier on the from address?
- epistasis 10mo agoHere's the suggestion: >Use <service>@<yourdomain> as your email address when signing up, and check the To header when receiving emails. The user of the webservice specifies a unique email per webservice; knowledge of that unique email address serves as a hint that the email came from someone that has discovered that email address, i.e. the webservice itself.
- cheschire 10mo agoRight, so 99% of the time that’s a spammer that is going to use that discovered email. I updated my message to specify other illegitimate sources to cover that less than 1%
- 10mo ago