6 ms·

And this is why in addition to per site passwords, I also use per site email addresses. I like to be able to track who spams me and in case of leaks I like the

• flanbiscuit 13y ago
  how do you keep track of all the emails? and did you always do this or did you start at one point having to go back through a lot of old accounts to change emails and passwords?
  • eswat 13y ago
    If you’re using Gmail you can use address aliases, like me+site@domain.com. Unfortunately some websites will not validate that type of email address.
  • gommm 13y ago
    I track all the emails with 1password (same as for the passwords). I started doing this four years ago but before that I had an email address that I reserved only for signing up for most websites (to prevent spam leaking into my personal email address).
  • reverend_gonzo 13y ago
    I've used sneakemail for a number of years. With their paid account ($12/yr, I think), it lets you create emails on the fly with a specific pattern. For example: amazon-flanbiscuit@sneakemail.com That gets forwarded to your actual email address, and you can see how it was tagged. If needed, you can whitelist/blacklist specific senders from specific tags as well.
    • FreezerburnV 13y ago
      Never heard of them before. Do they have any benefit over Spam Gourmet? (which I use occasionally, and is free)
      • reverend_gonzo 13y ago
        I've never heard of Spam Gourmet. I've been using Sneakemail for the past 10-15 years. Since it's so cheap, and it's worked well enough, I just haven't bothered looking at anything else.
    • a124556 13y ago
      With any standards compliant email server you can use "+whatever" in the username and the email should get to you: username+whatever@example.com.
      • wpietri 13y ago
        I believe that totally depends on the mail server. If there is an actual standard for that, please do point me to it.
      • jlgaddis 13y ago
        "+" is valid in the left-hand side portion and Postfix uses it (by default) as the separator to provide this feature but other mail systems (Qmail and, IIRC, Courier) use "-". That functionality is not an RFC requirement, however.
  • Datsundere 13y ago
    keepass
  • FreezerburnV 13y ago
    You can always use a service such as spamgourmet to "protect" your main email and be able to disable email addresses at any time. All the emails you get from the disposable email addresses just go to your main email address. Also the email address each email goes through is repeated in the subject line, so it's easy to keep track of things. (you can also get a list of all your disposable email addresses from their website)
  • yeldarb 13y ago
    I have a catch-all setup at my domain that forwards to my main account. I can then setup a filter to disable an address if it starts getting spammed or is compromised.
  • josephwegner 13y ago
    If you use gmail, you can use youremail+anything@gmail.com, and it will all get forwarded to youremail@gmail.com. This is incredibly handy for noticing who is sending you spam. I'll also use it for sites that I know are going to send me spam, and then immediately create a filter than deletes emails sent to joe+annoyingsite@gmail.com (note: that's not my real email)
    • flanbiscuit 13y ago
      I've found that when signing up for things, a lot sites don't allow the "+" in the email. They'll throw a email validation error. But at one point this was a good technique, I just think many sites have either don't allow it or can easily get around it
    • kisielk 13y ago
      That does nothing to increase the security of your accounts, since effectively the email address is the same.
      • oijaf888 13y ago
        It keeps phishing attacks from being able to cross services (since if you get a citibank email to your coinbase email that would be a big flag) and it reduces the attack surface on other sites. I use email.site@domain.com for this purpose and it makes it handy to see who has somehow lost/disclosed my email to third parties and not informed me (FreshDirect for example)
        • kisielk 13y ago
          email.site@domain.com is at least a distinct email address, unlike using +. Especially if you use different passwords for each account, it means if one of the emails is compromised then the attacker can't use it to recover passwords of your other sites.
          • oijaf888 13y ago
            + can be a distinct email address, just as . can be an alias. It really depends on how your email server is configured. Postfix makes it really easy to adjust what character you use.
  • ing33k 13y ago
    Microsoft email ( outlook.com ) offers email aliases which are pretty good for this purpose .
  • jlgaddis 13y ago
    My mail is hosted on servers running Postfix that I control, so this won't work for everybody. In main.cf: virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/db/virtual_aliases This file is in the same standard aliases(5) file format: zzz-foo@example.com my@real-account.com I started doing this when I moved all of my mail off of Google. It has the advantage (over you+foo@gmail.com) that it doesn't reveal my real mailbox. It does very quickly reveal who shares/sells my e-mail address, though. When that happens, it's simply a matter of deleting the alias from the file.