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Firefox Relay

relay.firefox.com

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Re: Firefox Relay

#81

Post by jlund-molfese »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #49
the_duke wrote: post #26

I've been using this pattern for years. I have a custom domain just for signups, and I sign up with [service].[username]@customdomain. The domain simply has a catchall email "accounts@customdomain" Combined with a password manager (Bitwarden) this is absolutely brilliant. * Spam: if I get any spam, I know exactly which company is responsible, whether directly, through selling user data or because of breaches. And I c…

Word of advice for anybody doing this: make sure you have a way to SEND email using one of your aliased addresses - because one day you will find a critical service provider can't process your emailed attachments unless sent from your registered email address (e.g. insurance claim document, bank documents, etc.)

And make sure you can easily fetch new emails on demand! I had a Migadu-Gmail setup, but the Gmail app and mobile site only pulled from the POP3 server every 30 minutes or something.

Which was fine until I had to verify my identity in-person at a Verizon store to cancel service and had to explain why I wouldn't be able to receive a verification email to verizon@mydomain for a while. Also annoying for my 401(k) which uses SMS for 2FA and makes the codes expire after 2 minutes.

Since then I've switched to a custom domain with iCloud, which unfortunately doesn't support catch-all addresses at all, but is more reliable and faster.

Re: Firefox Relay

#82

Post by Vinnl »

VTimofeenko wrote: post #75
Vinnl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I work on Relay and I do the same :) While the approach is great, especially in situations away from my computer where I can't generate a new alias in advance, working on it I discovered that using Relay still has a couple of advantages: - My other addresses are unguessable. - It's far easier to block emails sent to a single alias. With my own domain, I'll have to go and add a filter into which I copy-paste the…

On the unguessability of other addresses - I rotate several schemas making the mask of the address something like [service].[username].$(pwgen -1 | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')@customdomain. Sometimes "[service]" is also shortened like "hackernews -> hn" to dodge the ban on service name in the e-mail address that some service providers apparently have.

Ah, I don't necessarily mean guessability of which other addresses I use, but of how you can reach me. If I block yourservice@mydomain.com, you can still attempt to reach me at totallynotyourservice@mydomain.com and it will work. You'll also be able to link my different addresses on different services. If I throw away the Relay alias for your service, that's it - there's no way to lead that back to me anymore.

Re: Firefox Relay

#84

Post by Vinnl »

EMM_386 wrote: post #64

This sounds interesting, and I'd pay for it, but it seems to be dependent on a Firefox extension. Sadly, after literally 20+ years of using Firefox, I recently switched to Brave. The performance of FF was wearing on me. I realize it would seem to be very strange if Mozilla were to create a Chromium extension. But in this case, it is a paid service separate from the browser.

(Relay engineer here.)

While we provide a Firefox extension with which generating an alias is just a click away, you're not dependent on Firefox specifically: you can generate and access your generated alias through the web interface at https://relay.firefox.com in any browser.

(Also, I'm sure you've already tried a lot of things, but in case you didn't: perhaps refreshing Firefox helps? See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-a....)

Re: Firefox Relay

#85

Post by [deleted] »

groovecoder wrote: post #67
j1elo wrote: post #57

Relay is very cool but it took me like 24 hours since discovering and adopting it, to being unable to use it for an account. So I cannot recommend it to my family and friends who are much less tech literate than I am. In my case I was trying to create an account on the Linux Mint Forums [1]. The confirmation email never arrived, which was very confusing to me. [1]: https://forums.linuxmint.com/ After a couple emails…

(Tech lead of Relay here) Thanks for the detail! We'll look into this. We definitely want to maximize deliverability.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox Relay

#86

Post by hawski »

MickyTheMouse wrote: post #19

You can create aliases on Gmail with "+". firstname.lastname+spam@gmail.com. Probably works with other email providers too.

I use this scheme. I have a separate account (x@example.com), were I only give addresses with aliases (x+N-RANDOM-LETTERS@example.com). There are of course broken sites, that do not allow + in the e-mail address. Also Bolt (bolt-rider.com) ignores the alias and just sends to the base address (x@example.com).

Re: Firefox Relay

#87

Post by the8472 »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #49
the_duke wrote: post #26

I've been using this pattern for years. I have a custom domain just for signups, and I sign up with [service].[username]@customdomain. The domain simply has a catchall email "accounts@customdomain" Combined with a password manager (Bitwarden) this is absolutely brilliant. * Spam: if I get any spam, I know exactly which company is responsible, whether directly, through selling user data or because of breaches. And I c…

Word of advice for anybody doing this: make sure you have a way to SEND email using one of your aliased addresses - because one day you will find a critical service provider can't process your emailed attachments unless sent from your registered email address (e.g. insurance claim document, bank documents, etc.)

Thunderbird supports custom From: addresses in the mail compose window.

Re: Firefox Relay

#88

Post by pylon »

the_duke wrote: post #26

I've been using this pattern for years. I have a custom domain just for signups, and I sign up with [service].[username]@customdomain. The domain simply has a catchall email "accounts@customdomain" Combined with a password manager (Bitwarden) this is absolutely brilliant. * Spam: if I get any spam, I know exactly which company is responsible, whether directly, through selling user data or because of breaches. And I c…

Out of curiosity, is your customdomain in this case something without any personal info on it? I have a custom domain with my first name and last name initial .com, but now I'm thinking if I want this setup, maybe it's better off getting a domain with random words so even if email leaks, no personal data is leaked.

Re: Firefox Relay

#89

Post by paleogizmo »

MrksHfmn wrote: post #7

You can only hope that the service will last long enough and not be discontinued like Firefox Send. Otherwise you have created online accounts with dead alias emails. I create the alias mail addresses in my postfix installation under /etc/aliases

I’m cautious, but IIRC much of the issue with Firefox send was it being abused for huge/illegal files, which seems like less of an issue with a receive-only email address.

Re: Firefox Relay

#90

Post by [deleted] »

jlund-molfese wrote: post #81
ryanjshaw wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word of advice for anybody doing this: make sure you have a way to SEND email using one of your aliased addresses - because one day you will find a critical service provider can't process your emailed attachments unless sent from your registered email address (e.g. insurance claim document, bank documents, etc.)

And make sure you can easily fetch new emails on demand! I had a Migadu-Gmail setup, but the Gmail app and mobile site only pulled from the POP3 server every 30 minutes or something. Which was fine until I had to verify my identity in-person at a Verizon store to cancel service and had to explain why I wouldn't be able to receive a verification email to verizon@mydomain for a while. Also annoying for my 401(k) which…

[deleted]
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