been running my own email for 25 years or so. been using "plus" addressing (actually hyphen) for approximately as much. got only few cases when email got sold/shared. biggest issue was linkedin email address leak a bunch of years ago, so i got a lot of spam to -linkedin@ alias . changed email on linkedin to something different, and old emails go to spam
Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
51–60 of 102 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
woah, what do you mean by calling it fraud? Have you actually had companies come after you legally due to an email alias?
I'm not GP, but I've had transitions denied while attempting to purchase something because the retailer's code flagged my email address as suspicious because it contained their name in it.
Just another data point, I've had the same issue with some vendors.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#53I self-host my own email server (against The Greater Internet's better judgement, it feels) and one of the neat things I can do with Postfix is set any arbitrary character as a username/junk separator.
Gmail has supported this for a long time with the '+' character, but this has some major problems. Many things that accept email addresses don't recognize '+' as a valid email username character and won't let you submit the form. I hypothesize that some of this is poor awareness of what constitutes a valid email address, and some of it is intentional to force users to input their "real" email address. I have also run across a few systems that stripped off the '+' suffix off my gmail address.
My solution is to use the '.' as the separator because 'firstname.lastname' is a VERY common email username and I'm happy to not allow it in a "real" username on my tiny mail host.
So every new site or company I interact with gets user.acme@example.com instead of my "real" email address. I can filter incoming emails based on the To header. And I even have a list of companies (a couple well-known) that have leaked or sold my email address to spammers. Some day I'll write a blog post about that.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#54Use unique plus addresses for each service that requests email address.
A lot of services don't accept the '+' sign in an email address, even though it's perfectly valid according to RFCs. Part of this is ignorance of standards but I suspect part of it is deliberate. (To get the users' "real" addresses.)
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#55Lightly and calmly, meaning I have many aliases on my addresses on personal domains and I try to always give unique aliases (keeping some spare on purpose), but not always-always because I'm not enough disciplined and the track is very informal, when (very rarely) I see spam I know it's time to rotate the alias. That's is.
Of course if unknown@spammer.net write to my amazon-cx1@mypersonaldomain.tld I could try to locate who have sold/leaked my address but it's still vague, since Amazon, eBay, PayPal, have a gazillion of third party. If it's to JoeIKnowNothingAboutIT@maypersonaldomain.tld it's likely he was cracked and so on.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
woah, what do you mean by calling it fraud? Have you actually had companies come after you legally due to an email alias?
I'm not GP, but I've had transitions denied while attempting to purchase something because the retailer's code flagged my email address as suspicious because it contained their name in it.
I had this happen as well. I responded with a long rant, which apparently proved my humanity.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#57I use Proton's email aliases for throwaway accounts, and I have a catch-all on my own domain and use custom email addresses (think apple.com-randomstring@example.com) for accounts that I intend to keep until I die.
I do something like this with Proton and my own domain as well. However, I made the mistake of buying a .io domain, thinking England would be pretty stable. Now I need to figure out what I’m doing.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#58What's especially awesome is how many unsolicited emails don't have unsubscribe links in them.
If an email is truly unsolicited (didn't come from an entity you didn't give your address to), it's not wise to click on an unsubscribe link anyway, as it sends a strong signal to the spammers that not only was the email delivered to a real person, but they also read it. In their eyes, you just went from a random string of letters to a hot sales lead.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
woah, what do you mean by calling it fraud? Have you actually had companies come after you legally due to an email alias?
Conversations caused by the odd looking email address can often get very nasty. This is why I also like how iCloud does with their hide my mail feature; there’s nothing suspicious about the email you give out.
It only has to be unique. It's easy to find out who you gave it to by looking at the very first email.
ROT13 or the date in base36 (to keep it short) might help when you need to spell your email address over the phone. Today is oaf@example.com.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#60Yes every service gets a custom address. It's also interesting that some services don't allow COMPANYNAME@mydomain.com for registration. (Can't remember which)
I can't remember which company now, but one time I called into customer support and gave them the unique email address that I used for that account. It had their company name in it. Something like bityard.acme@example.com, for instance. The person on the other end paused for several seconds as if looking over their shoulder and whispered, "wait... do you work here or something?"