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Show HN: Why share your email address when you can hide it?

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Re: Show HN: Why share your email address when you can hide it?

#11

Post by mattowen_uk »

user3939382 wrote: post #8

I hide my email address by using Fastmail which supports wildcard users e.g. *@example.com so I can effortlessly assign a unique email address to anyone who asks for one. FYI, after years of running this experiment I’ve found that vendors don’t tend to share their email address lists. One of the only exceptions that comes to mind is someone scraping my LinkedIn email for e-commerce marketing.

I've done exactly they same for many years via email aliases in MS Exchange. I too discovered that the only real sharing/leaking of email addresses was my paypal and ebay ones, and a legacy one that I used to use on USEnet back when we all didn't know better.

My take-away was: always proxy ebay/paypal accounts behind another mail provider, and be ready to change those emails when they get compromised.

Re: Show HN: Why share your email address when you can hide it?

#12

Post by CryDeTaan »

user3939382 wrote: post #8

I hide my email address by using Fastmail which supports wildcard users e.g. *@example.com so I can effortlessly assign a unique email address to anyone who asks for one. FYI, after years of running this experiment I’ve found that vendors don’t tend to share their email address lists. One of the only exceptions that comes to mind is someone scraping my LinkedIn email for e-commerce marketing.

> I hide my email address by using Fastmail which supports wildcard user

Yes this service is not a new thing, and people come up with different ways to solve this problem.

> FYI, after years of running this experiment I’ve found that vendors don’t tend to share their email address lists.

I pretty much agree with you. But it happens, and I do feel better knowing even if they do, I needn't worry :)

Re: Show HN: Why share your email address when you can hide it?

#15

Post by Macha »

user3939382 wrote: post #8

I hide my email address by using Fastmail which supports wildcard users e.g. *@example.com so I can effortlessly assign a unique email address to anyone who asks for one. FYI, after years of running this experiment I’ve found that vendors don’t tend to share their email address lists. One of the only exceptions that comes to mind is someone scraping my LinkedIn email for e-commerce marketing.

I've gotten a fair few emails to my address used for git commits also. Doubt each recruiter is compiling it manually, but someone must have built a script that cloned git repos and inspected the data, as I don't think GitHub shows it in the UI

Re: Show HN: Why share your email address when you can hide it?

#16

Post by CryDeTaan »

onion2k wrote: post #13

Are you keeping a copy of everyone's emails so you can mine them and sell the data? You'd make a fortune. That stuff is worth a lot. Also, can you prove that's not happening?

No I do not keep any emails, and a valid concern for sure.

I mean I do not have an easy way to show anyone. But I have thought about how to deal with such a request, and my thinking was to have a video call with someone and show. For the moment that is how I would solve that. Not ideal but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Show HN: Why share your email address when you can hide it?

#17

Post by Macha »

chmaynard wrote: post #3

Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. This appears to be a commercial site that requires an account and payment up front. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

Dropbox is one of the oldest and most known Show HNs, that was a commercial site that required account creation up front

Re: Show HN: Why share your email address when you can hide it?

#18

Post by Saris »

I'd love to see a simple browser addon that takes care of generating an email for new sites, because there are several similar services out there and I think on all of them you have to manually go generate an email.

Kind of a silly preference maybe because it's still easy to do manually, but it would make the paid service more attractive I think.

Re: Show HN: Why share your email address when you can hide it?

#20

Post by DicIfTEx »

Macha wrote: post #15
user3939382 wrote: post #8

I hide my email address by using Fastmail which supports wildcard users e.g. *@example.com so I can effortlessly assign a unique email address to anyone who asks for one. FYI, after years of running this experiment I’ve found that vendors don’t tend to share their email address lists. One of the only exceptions that comes to mind is someone scraping my LinkedIn email for e-commerce marketing.

I've gotten a fair few emails to my address used for git commits also. Doubt each recruiter is compiling it manually, but someone must have built a script that cloned git repos and inspected the data, as I don't think GitHub shows it in the UI

> I don't think GitHub shows it in the UI

Add `.patch` to the end of the URL when viewing a commit to view the full commit, including user information. E.g., ‘/commit/.patch’" rel="nofollow">https://github.com//commit/.patch’.

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