6 ms·

Don't Use a gmail.com Address

67 points by jruohonen 1mo ago

Retr0id 1mo ago
Inferred context: It's the (unverified) email field of a blog comment submission form. gmail.com happens to be the domain that spammers pick most often for their fake email addresses for their spam comments.
Insanity 1mo ago
Given they accept any input that presumably matches a regex it doesn’t matter which one you choose. But if you are looking for a new email provider and de-Google your life, I’m pretty with ProtonMail and their other offerings. Also moved my 2FA and Password manager to them, alongside their VPN.
- temp0826 1mo ago
  I've been a proton user for a while but have always shied away from their other offerings...feels like too many eggs in one basket to use them for both email and password management (things I consider to be the most critical of all services I use). Vpn as well! Am I being paranoid? It would be nice to not pay for 3 separate services but I have kind of a blockage about it
  - Insanity 1mo ago
    Fair enough, I get the sentiment about not putting all eggs in 1 basket, but if your choice is between 1 ecosystem (Google / Apple / Proton), I’d argue in favour of Proton. :)
- zetsurin 1mo ago
  proton has some issues that may or may not be issues for you - https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/proton-mail-fbi-stop-cop-city-payment-data-2026/ https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/proton-mail-fbi-stop-co... - http://thoughtportal.org/2025/02/26/proton-mail-says-its-politically-neutral-while-praising-republican-party/ http://thoughtportal.org/2025/02/26/proton-mail-says-its-pol... these people seem more problem free so far https://mail.tutanota.com/login https://mail.tutanota.com/login
  - Insanity 1mo ago
    Frequently when someone mentions Proton on HN the response is along the lines of what you just did. In the big scheme of things, I’d trust Proton more than Google and other big tech companies even if they aren’t perfect.
    - mitxela 1mo ago
      I'd still prefer tuta or fastmail. It doesn't matter so much about their privacy stance - competition is good. We don't want proton to become the new Gmail.
- heltale 1mo ago
  Has anyone tried Migadu? I was wondering whether it’d be a good option for if I wanted to use it for my business.
UI_at_80x24 1mo ago
Blog is getting too much spam, so they are restricting posts/comments from Gmail.com addresses. That's ok, I understand the desire. I also recognize that it's a lazy "fix". I have my own domain and prefer that so I can track compromised sites. In quasi-related conversation though, in the last year I have encountered 2 "necessary" websites (insurance, and medical form) that would only accept: Gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc addresses! It's frustrating.
jwr 1mo ago
I gave up on reporting spam. Almost all of the spam I get (and I get a lot of it!) comes from Google, Amazon and Microsoft. None of them care much, none of them make reporting easy, and it seems they don't follow up, because the flood of spam never ceases. They are "too big to fail": few people can afford to just block Google. This is why I am very happy to see people starting to do just that.
rvz 1mo ago
Can't be preaching to others about "privacy", or disliking Ads and then at the same time be using a gmail.com address.
llm_nerd 1mo ago
Some tiny blog allows comments (which is incredibly weird in 2026). Spambots fill in the email box with fake addresses. Blog lazily just sets up a filter to auto-kill all gmail tagged addresses. This has nothing to do with Google, Gmail, spam coming from gmail, or using gmail addresses, outside of leaving a comment on this tiny blog. Yet all the other comments seem to presume they do. Are people just upvoting this thinking it says something it doesn't? (That was rhetorical, because of course this nonsense front-paged because of lazy people just voting on a title).
fuldeka 1mo ago
[dead]
readme 1mo ago
I host my own email. I also have a gmail account, that I've had since the beta. I cannot tell you how many times I have encountered a person that asks for my email and then looked at me confused when it didn't end in gmail, outlook, or something, and then ask me for another email, as if only that would be good enough.
- seiferteric 1mo ago
  I have my own domain and my email ends with a .casa TLD and it not only causes confusion, I have had some websites reject it as invalid.
  - graemep 1mo ago
    I think lesser known TLDs are the problem. I have had a .net domain and used the email address (and its self hosted these days, which has been a problem with sending to hotmail) and have never had it rejected or confuse anyone. ON the other hand I had a website with a ccTLD and one guy kept trying to add .com to it - his own country's ccTLD!
  - lavataco 1mo ago
    i love my .town email, and ive had very few rejections from websites. maybe like 2 ever. plus i can make up departments for each site i signup for
- mywacaday 1mo ago
  I wanted to take a look at Boomi.com but couldn't sign up with gmail, turned on email forwarding for a parked domain to get past it. Stupid behaviour if you are trying to sell a product.
- steelframe 1mo ago
  I own my own domain in the .us TLD, and I've been using it for my email for the past 20 years. When I applied for an "Electronic Travel Authorisation" (ETA) to enter Great Britain earlier this year the app flat-out rejected my email address as invalid. Usually, when that sort of thing happens, I just choose to take my business elsewhere or use my time in a different way. However it really ups the ante when a nation-state refuses entry based on that category of technical incompetence.
encom 1mo ago
Quoting a dead comment: >I wish we didn't have to use email at all. Email has big problems, but contemplate the kind of lovecraftian horror the great minds of silicon valley would replace it with today. Imagine the worst parts of Facebook, Electron, Discord, Windows 11, CloudFlare and TikTok. Secured by Denuvo and the CIA and brought to you by Dollar Shave Club and the Chinese Communist Party. You'd wish you had email back.
- mitxela 1mo ago
  You mean ATProto Spaces?
altmanaltman 1mo ago
"Blog flooded in spam" but it has less than 50 comments on all posts generally? Or is it assuming they are deleting or blocking the supposed flood of spam comments that is unbearable enough to block gmail?
- llm_nerd 1mo ago
  Random little sites that allow and auto-publish user submissions have gotten targeted with spambots for decades. And I mean in the AI era, using an LLM to generate even more capable spambots for every site is super doable. This silly submission front-paged purely because of the title, and loads of lazy HNers who just upvote based on the title, not realizing this basically has nothing to do with gmail.
jocoda 1mo ago
That ship has sailed. A far as most are concerned gmail is email. So that is now the reality. Google has successfully, without any resistance, assimilated email and the web. I run my own mail and I faithfully avoid chrome as much as I can but the ship is long gone over the horizon. Sad. But so it goes.
- graemep 1mo ago
  Not true for me. All businesses of any size, and even most small businesses, that email me have their own domain. Individuals use a variety of services, and even one or two non-geeks use their own domains.
  - bestouff 1mo ago
    Surprise surprise : lots of companies really use gmail with a custom domain. No way to escape.
    - graemep 1mo ago
      Lots do, and lots do not.
- tim333 1mo ago
  I have emails from gmail, hotmail, yahoo and my own domain. Also many browsers. I use Google stuff mostly because it works best. It's sort of how the free market is supposed to work?
  - graemep 1mo ago
    Yes, largely, as long as we have all those choices, including using smaller providers and self-hosting email. The danger is that a small number of businesses will lock others out.
- ghssds 1mo ago
  With that attitude, certainly.
tourist2d 1mo ago
[dead]
bcrl 1mo ago
I think the difference between Google's DMARC policy for gmail.com and google.com says it all: bcrl@home:~/electronics/vrm/lm5017/test-lm5017-isobuck$ host -t txt _dmarc.gmail.com _dmarc.gmail.com descriptive text "v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=quarantine; rua=mailto:mailauth-reports@google.com" bcrl@home:~/electronics/vrm/lm5017/test-lm5017-isobuck$ host -t txt _dmarc.google.com _dmarc.google.com descriptive text "v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:mailauth-reports@google.com"
- rpdillon 1mo ago
  Wait, wouldn't setting gmail.com to p=reject break anyone using legacy email-forwarding setups and mailing lists?
  - bcrl 1mo ago
    No. DKIM signatures were designed to work when emails are forwarded. I run a couple of Linux related mailing lists, and the DKIM signature continues to validate specified headers and the body of the email when forwarded or resent via mailing lists. Dealing with that quirk happened a decade ago, and it is why most mailing lists no longer add headers or footers to emails with instructions on how to unsubscribe.
    - rpdillon 1mo ago
      Nice, thanks for the explanation. I haven't run a mailing list in over ten years, so I'm afraid I'm a bit out of date on the setup.
wavewrangler 1mo ago
Why not just add extra verification for Gmail addresses?
mococa 1mo ago
I don’t use gmail anymore, it just redirect to my custom domain (I use apple mail, but since I own the domain, I can move to anywhere/anytime)
dinosaur0001 1mo ago
I use a custom domainm professionally. I had a client ask me to “gmail” him some information.
VCFundedGenYer 1mo ago
...and who is this? Random blog dealing with spam problems blocks gmail (the most used email) wholesale? Not exactly going to stop the world from turning here.
gionn 1mo ago
It’s 2026 and someone is genuinely shocked that an unprotected web form gets instantly destroyed by bots.

67 points by jruohonen 1mo ago

Inferred context: It's the (unverified) email field of a blog comment submission form. gmail.com happens to be the domain that spammers pick most often for their fake email addresses for their spam comments.

Insanity 1mo ago

Given they accept any input that presumably matches a regex it doesn’t matter which one you choose. But if you are looking for a new email provider and de-Google your life, I’m pretty with ProtonMail and their other offerings. Also moved my 2FA and Password manager to them, alongside their VPN.

temp0826 1mo ago
I've been a proton user for a while but have always shied away from their other offerings...feels like too many eggs in one basket to use them for both email and password management (things I consider to be the most critical of all services I use). Vpn as well! Am I being paranoid? It would be nice to not pay for 3 separate services but I have kind of a blockage about it
- Insanity 1mo ago
  Fair enough, I get the sentiment about not putting all eggs in 1 basket, but if your choice is between 1 ecosystem (Google / Apple / Proton), I’d argue in favour of Proton. :)
zetsurin 1mo ago
proton has some issues that may or may not be issues for you - https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/proton-mail-fbi-stop-cop-city-payment-data-2026/ https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/proton-mail-fbi-stop-co... - http://thoughtportal.org/2025/02/26/proton-mail-says-its-politically-neutral-while-praising-republican-party/ http://thoughtportal.org/2025/02/26/proton-mail-says-its-pol... these people seem more problem free so far https://mail.tutanota.com/login https://mail.tutanota.com/login
- Insanity 1mo ago
  Frequently when someone mentions Proton on HN the response is along the lines of what you just did. In the big scheme of things, I’d trust Proton more than Google and other big tech companies even if they aren’t perfect.
  - mitxela 1mo ago
    I'd still prefer tuta or fastmail. It doesn't matter so much about their privacy stance - competition is good. We don't want proton to become the new Gmail.
heltale 1mo ago
Has anyone tried Migadu? I was wondering whether it’d be a good option for if I wanted to use it for my business.

UI_at_80x24 1mo ago

Blog is getting too much spam, so they are restricting posts/comments from Gmail.com addresses. That's ok, I understand the desire. I also recognize that it's a lazy "fix". I have my own domain and prefer that so I can track compromised sites. In quasi-related conversation though, in the last year I have encountered 2 "necessary" websites (insurance, and medical form) that would only accept: Gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc addresses! It's frustrating.

jwr 1mo ago

I gave up on reporting spam. Almost all of the spam I get (and I get a lot of it!) comes from Google, Amazon and Microsoft. None of them care much, none of them make reporting easy, and it seems they don't follow up, because the flood of spam never ceases. They are "too big to fail": few people can afford to just block Google. This is why I am very happy to see people starting to do just that.

rvz 1mo ago

Can't be preaching to others about "privacy", or disliking Ads and then at the same time be using a gmail.com address.

llm_nerd 1mo ago

Some tiny blog allows comments (which is incredibly weird in 2026). Spambots fill in the email box with fake addresses. Blog lazily just sets up a filter to auto-kill all gmail tagged addresses. This has nothing to do with Google, Gmail, spam coming from gmail, or using gmail addresses, outside of leaving a comment on this tiny blog. Yet all the other comments seem to presume they do. Are people just upvoting this thinking it says something it doesn't? (That was rhetorical, because of course this nonsense front-paged because of lazy people just voting on a title).

fuldeka 1mo ago

[dead]

readme 1mo ago

I host my own email. I also have a gmail account, that I've had since the beta. I cannot tell you how many times I have encountered a person that asks for my email and then looked at me confused when it didn't end in gmail, outlook, or something, and then ask me for another email, as if only that would be good enough.

seiferteric 1mo ago
I have my own domain and my email ends with a .casa TLD and it not only causes confusion, I have had some websites reject it as invalid.
- graemep 1mo ago
  I think lesser known TLDs are the problem. I have had a .net domain and used the email address (and its self hosted these days, which has been a problem with sending to hotmail) and have never had it rejected or confuse anyone. ON the other hand I had a website with a ccTLD and one guy kept trying to add .com to it - his own country's ccTLD!
- lavataco 1mo ago
  i love my .town email, and ive had very few rejections from websites. maybe like 2 ever. plus i can make up departments for each site i signup for
mywacaday 1mo ago
I wanted to take a look at Boomi.com but couldn't sign up with gmail, turned on email forwarding for a parked domain to get past it. Stupid behaviour if you are trying to sell a product.
steelframe 1mo ago
I own my own domain in the .us TLD, and I've been using it for my email for the past 20 years. When I applied for an "Electronic Travel Authorisation" (ETA) to enter Great Britain earlier this year the app flat-out rejected my email address as invalid. Usually, when that sort of thing happens, I just choose to take my business elsewhere or use my time in a different way. However it really ups the ante when a nation-state refuses entry based on that category of technical incompetence.

encom 1mo ago

Quoting a dead comment: >I wish we didn't have to use email at all. Email has big problems, but contemplate the kind of lovecraftian horror the great minds of silicon valley would replace it with today. Imagine the worst parts of Facebook, Electron, Discord, Windows 11, CloudFlare and TikTok. Secured by Denuvo and the CIA and brought to you by Dollar Shave Club and the Chinese Communist Party. You'd wish you had email back.

mitxela 1mo ago
You mean ATProto Spaces?

altmanaltman 1mo ago

"Blog flooded in spam" but it has less than 50 comments on all posts generally? Or is it assuming they are deleting or blocking the supposed flood of spam comments that is unbearable enough to block gmail?

llm_nerd 1mo ago
Random little sites that allow and auto-publish user submissions have gotten targeted with spambots for decades. And I mean in the AI era, using an LLM to generate even more capable spambots for every site is super doable. This silly submission front-paged purely because of the title, and loads of lazy HNers who just upvote based on the title, not realizing this basically has nothing to do with gmail.

jocoda 1mo ago

That ship has sailed. A far as most are concerned gmail is email. So that is now the reality. Google has successfully, without any resistance, assimilated email and the web. I run my own mail and I faithfully avoid chrome as much as I can but the ship is long gone over the horizon. Sad. But so it goes.

graemep 1mo ago
Not true for me. All businesses of any size, and even most small businesses, that email me have their own domain. Individuals use a variety of services, and even one or two non-geeks use their own domains.
- bestouff 1mo ago
  Surprise surprise : lots of companies really use gmail with a custom domain. No way to escape.
  - graemep 1mo ago
    Lots do, and lots do not.
tim333 1mo ago
I have emails from gmail, hotmail, yahoo and my own domain. Also many browsers. I use Google stuff mostly because it works best. It's sort of how the free market is supposed to work?
- graemep 1mo ago
  Yes, largely, as long as we have all those choices, including using smaller providers and self-hosting email. The danger is that a small number of businesses will lock others out.
ghssds 1mo ago
With that attitude, certainly.

tourist2d 1mo ago

[dead]

bcrl 1mo ago

I think the difference between Google's DMARC policy for gmail.com and google.com says it all: bcrl@home:~/electronics/vrm/lm5017/test-lm5017-isobuck$ host -t txt _dmarc.gmail.com _dmarc.gmail.com descriptive text "v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=quarantine; rua=mailto:mailauth-reports@google.com" bcrl@home:~/electronics/vrm/lm5017/test-lm5017-isobuck$ host -t txt _dmarc.google.com _dmarc.google.com descriptive text "v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:mailauth-reports@google.com"

rpdillon 1mo ago
Wait, wouldn't setting gmail.com to p=reject break anyone using legacy email-forwarding setups and mailing lists?
- bcrl 1mo ago
  No. DKIM signatures were designed to work when emails are forwarded. I run a couple of Linux related mailing lists, and the DKIM signature continues to validate specified headers and the body of the email when forwarded or resent via mailing lists. Dealing with that quirk happened a decade ago, and it is why most mailing lists no longer add headers or footers to emails with instructions on how to unsubscribe.
  - rpdillon 1mo ago
    Nice, thanks for the explanation. I haven't run a mailing list in over ten years, so I'm afraid I'm a bit out of date on the setup.

wavewrangler 1mo ago

Why not just add extra verification for Gmail addresses?

mococa 1mo ago

I don’t use gmail anymore, it just redirect to my custom domain (I use apple mail, but since I own the domain, I can move to anywhere/anytime)

dinosaur0001 1mo ago

I use a custom domainm professionally. I had a client ask me to “gmail” him some information.

VCFundedGenYer 1mo ago

...and who is this? Random blog dealing with spam problems blocks gmail (the most used email) wholesale? Not exactly going to stop the world from turning here.

gionn 1mo ago

It’s 2026 and someone is genuinely shocked that an unprotected web form gets instantly destroyed by bots.