Not any more. Dark web rollups include just about everything you could ever want to know about anyone. Using a unique address per service just makes it easier to identify which services you use.
Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
71–80 of 102 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#72I also have an @ alias on my domains, and give unique addreses to companies/services which identifies them. I'm only had a couple accusations of "fraud", but they were easily dispelled by asking them to explain what "fraud" I was committing (they couldn't) and explaining why I do this.
Addresses which have been lost/stolen and start receiving spam become spam traps, and I change the email address with the company/service to a new alias so their legitimate mail is delivered normally.
In some of the few cases where the loss/theft was identified, it didn't happen at company/service directly, but with one of their suppliers, for example, a breach at the marketing email provider they used.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#73I've seen quite a few people here reccomending the use of . and + from gmail, but I don't think its a good idea at all.
Most people who work in the 'email marketing' space know about this feature. So it's common to see people recommending clients to 'clear' their email list before sending unsolicited emails. And some services even offer this as a feature in the platform.
And that also goes for custom domains hosted on gmail. You only need a MX query to learn who is responsible for mail handling in a specific domain.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hiding information behind a non-standard encoding is a really smart idea.
I will update my technique to use incorporate this method, thanks!
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#75Catchall for 25 years :) (on domainfactory - df.eu) each company/service gets their own email prefix, so I can determine spam and also filter unsolicited emails.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#76What's especially awesome is how many unsolicited emails don't have unsubscribe links in them.
Also nuts is when they couple them to phony real world locations like "123 Main St., Mytown MA"
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#77I 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 submi…
I do this too. It's worth noting that you don't need to host your own email server to do this. I personally use Migadu as an email host for my own domains which lets me define arbitrary wildcard redirects. I'm sure most of its competitors will let you do the same.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have not had anyone accuse me of fraud yet, but I have had email addresses rejected because they too obviously contained the company name in them.
Samsung does this for example! You can't register a Samsung account if your email contains the word "Samsung"...
I think this might be a lazy attempt to protect users from scammers trying to impersonate the company.
There are people that will read an email from "SamsungCeo@gmail.com" and think it's actually from the owner of the company...
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#79I used to use a catch-all with a custom e-mail for every website I used. I had amazon@mydomain, newegg@mydomain, etc. I found that despite what people think, your e-mail address isn't being sold. At least, not by any vendors with a remotely decent reputation. I never got spam to any of those e-mail addresses.
That is my experience as well. I have heaps of 'Masked Email' aliases for my Fastmail email account and the only significant offender I've come across is various Kickstarter projects (as I understand Kickstarter passes on my email address when a project is successfully funded) and various Bitcoin sites from back when I dabbled in Bitcoins. All other reputable companies have actually not sold any of my email addresses (including some I've noticed elsewhere in this thread accused of doing so, which I find quite interesting). I am now at the point where I'm considering migrating back the majority of my aliases back to firstname@lastname.TLD address for most things. It is more hassle than it's worth as I often forget I had a Masked Email and end up creating a second account. Also in-store if I need to provide my address it is awkward giving out what sounds to store staff like a dodgy address. Also when I reinstall my computer/phone/etc it's a hassle figuring out what login address I used for each site/app I have accounts with. I may use Masked Email only if there is a higher level of risk.
Re: Ask HN: Do you track how your email address is used?
#80Use 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.)
The worst examples are services that accept + when creating an account but does not accept + for logins. Believe it or not this has happened to me several times, and with large companies too. When companies started blocking + address specifically and/or being clever with removing the + part, I decided it was not worth using + addresses anymore.