I care. Maintain a collection of emails per tier of service plus some Apple obfuscation.
Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
11–20 of 102 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#12Yes.
I use a catch-all. I can accept (whatever)@mydomain.tld
Anytime a new company wants my email address, I just randomly give them one.
So far I only get spam to the email addresses other people posted on a website as contacts for organizations I volunteer with.
(I get spam from web scraping, not from company hacks/sharing etc.)
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#13Yes. I use a catch-all. I can accept (whatever)@mydomain.tld Anytime a new company wants my email address, I just randomly give them one. So far I only get spam to the email addresses other people posted on a website as contacts for organizations I volunteer with. (I get spam from web scraping, not from company hacks/sharing etc.)
JW, why?
Do you get so much spam from a specific email that you feel safe to ban it completely? Are you able to sue them or just send a strongly worded email about how they sold your email?
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#14Yes. I use a catch-all. I can accept (whatever)@mydomain.tld Anytime a new company wants my email address, I just randomly give them one. So far I only get spam to the email addresses other people posted on a website as contacts for organizations I volunteer with. (I get spam from web scraping, not from company hacks/sharing etc.)
JW, why? Do you get so much spam from a specific email that you feel safe to ban it completely? Are you able to sue them or just send a strongly worded email about how they sold your email?
Before this, when just using a single email address, I had no idea where the spam was coming from.
Now I know where the spam (I get) comes from.
I haven't had to ban any addresses yet.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#15Fastmail offers per-service generated addresses. I think it's kind of fascinating to watch my email address that went solely to my local credit union start sending me spam somewhat related to my employer.
Fastmail allows for aliasing too - username@domain.tld -> bank@username.domain.tld, retailer@username.domain.tld, etc. Pretty convenient. I use that feature pretty often and I can only recall one instance which seemed to indicate my address was sold to spammers. It’s more useful for organizing incoming mail, like plus-aliasing in gmail.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#16I have a catch-all domain but I don’t bother to setup unique emails for each service. It’s too much of a headache and you have to ask yourself:
If I find out someone sold/shared/leaked my email what am I going to do?
Here the possible responses as I see it:
* Stop doing business with them - This is way easier said than done
* Be mad - ok, great, now what?
* Send a strongly worded email - again, so what?
* Sue them? - Good luck
Selling or sharing my email address is a shitty thing to do, but my recourse is extremely limited and really ends up with me just being angry with nothing to do about it. Given that I’ve decided just to not care.
There are many things in life that I once cared about or once got worked up about that I don’t anymore because I’ve realized that it’s just not worth it. I’ve tried to identify more and more the things that get me mad, but don’t affect any change and then purge those things from my life. Life is too short to spend your time worrying about things like who sells your email.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#17I use iCloud’s Hide my Email feature. So I have dozen email addresses and I receive email in the same inbox. I don’t care how my email addresses are used. The moment I see too much spam, I remove the email address.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#18I care. I use a generated email address at my domain for every account/service/website. I store the account info in keepass, they all have generated passwords too. I can see when email comes in who abused the email, was compromised, or sold it. If an email starts getting spam, i block receiving to that address. if desired, I update the account to have another generated email, but usually if I'm getting spam to that e…
Does that work? I mean if I had that rule, I wouldn’t do business with almost anyone again. How does that help even?
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#19I do not. I have three mail boxes, for trashy, job-y and personal things. And a couple of technical (apple id, etc).
Gmail is really good at filtering spam, so I probably looked into it and found a letter that I waited for only one time in last few years. My inboxes are either empty or may get first non-spam marketing emails that I unsubscribe from immediately. Unread count zero.
Idk why people fortify their email that much and investigate who does what. Have no issues nor hesitation with leaving my work email at any local org.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#20I care but don't have time or the resources. What I have made a habit of tho is registering to any new website or service using example any.name@gmail.com → register using a.nyname@gmail.com. I then take note of which variant / which service.
I have no idea if this works the way I expect it logically could or should, but if it does I guess I have some data to go thru.