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Firefox Relay

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Re: Firefox Relay

#101

Post by WA »

pylon wrote: post #88
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.

Not OP, but same setup. I have a custom domain that has a generic name. Not entirely random just in case I ever have to spell it out or something, but no PII in the domain name. Also, Whois privacy service through my registrar.

Re: Firefox Relay

#102

Post by e12e »

the8472 wrote: post #87
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.)

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

But, your mail might bounce without proper sfp setup. (preventing random from like in the good old days (president@whitehouse.gov) is pretty much the raison d'être for sfp... For better or worse).

Re: Firefox Relay

#103

Post by vxNsr »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #79
chrisjc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> of course they still use names, address, credit card info, etc I haven't used this service, only heard about it. It might cover your missing piece for credit card info. https://privacy.com/ Of course, privacy.com ends up being the one that can aggregate your CC information together.

I ended up choosing Abine Blur. The interface isn't as nice, but it seemed more security-focused. Privacy.com seemed to actually collect a lot of information and prevent you from removing it later on.

> Abine Blur

So, I just googled them, they look interesting but their website seems intent on obfuscating what they do, it uses a lot of marketing speak but doesn't tell me how it works.

Are you able to use your own domain for the "email masking"?

Are you giving them your bank info for the credit card masking or are they billing the credit card on file?

Re: Firefox Relay

#104

Post by e12e »

pylon wrote: post #88
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.

I'm not currently using it (took down my opensmtpd server.. Haven't replaced it yet) - but I used a subdomain on a vanity domain (in my case things like hn@s.hypertekst.net). If I need a "new" domain, I can just move to another (r.hypertekst.net - s for spam, r for registration... Etc).

Re: Firefox Relay

#105

Post by crossroadsguy »

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…

I do this but on my main domain. I have another domain and I guess I might to move spam catching exclusively to that domain.

Anyway the trouble is writing mail to those services or replying to those. I have 13 from email usernames in my Mail.app right now on my domain. Then I stopped it. It’s just so tedious.

I wish there was an app that would let me easily do it once I proved I’m the domain owner maybe - just let me send an email from @.tld without having to add one separately. It should also allow me to reply from same email without hassle

I tried Apple iCloud+‘S HideMyEmail feature, but:

- It’s a harder lock-in into their ecosystem

- Not available on custom domain

- You can reply from that random email username if you get email username, but you can’t start a conversation easily.

- when you stop paying those randomly generated Hide My Email are gone

- Not very convenient in the browser especially if you are not in Safari or a Mac.

Re: Firefox Relay

#106

Post by thmzlt »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #105
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…

I do this but on my main domain. I have another domain and I guess I might to move spam catching exclusively to that domain. Anyway the trouble is writing mail to those services or replying to those. I have 13 from email usernames in my Mail.app right now on my domain. Then I stopped it. It’s just so tedious. I wish there was an app that would let me easily do it once I proved I’m the domain owner maybe - just let me…

You can do that in FastMail (web UI or mobile app). It supports multiple domains too.

The compose view looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/qULeL5a

Re: Firefox Relay

#108

Post by techsupporter »

DerekBickerton wrote: post #59
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…

> So while it looked promising, sadly the next day I was already back to using gmail addresses I know this pain point well. Some sites, instead of using a blacklist of every single disposable e-mail service, just use a whitelist of 'popular' email domains like gmail.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com etc This is why I have accounts with gmail and other popular e-mail providers. That's the only reason. Sad that you have to c…

> Some sites, instead of using a blacklist of every single disposable e-mail service, just use a whitelist of 'popular' email domains

This is very interesting to me as I've had my own domain for a very long time and haven't encountered this more than twice in that time. If you don't mind sharing, on what kinds of sites have you seen this?

I am not at all discounting your experience. We probably have different interests and visit different sites so I'm interested to explore that.

I have very often hit the "you can't use emails from that service here" deny list which is why I think these kinds of services are neat but will quickly be rendered useless once the deny lists are updated.

Re: Firefox Relay

#109

Post by VTimofeenko »

Vinnl wrote: post #82
VTimofeenko wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gotcha.

> you can still attempt to reach me at totallynotyourservice@mydomain.com not if the catch-all address is actually /dev/null and the totallynotyourservice@ has to be mined from somewhere because it's random.

Overall, I think it depends on the obfuscation strategy. It's true that having a unique @mydomain.com part is a big giveaway and someone could theoretically track one's activity by searching for all e-mail addresses coming from the domain.

My use-case is more to use unique e-mail addresses to throw off credential stuffing attacks, not become untrackable/avoid all spam. For the tracking use-case I generally think several times if I want to register somewhere at all and try the usual routes first (mailinator, random old addresses on public e-mail).

Re: Firefox Relay

#110

Post by groovecoder »

drdaeman wrote: post #95

> Your own email domain youremail@yourdomain.mozmail.com I don't understand why would one want to pay for a step down in privacy, voluntarily adding an identifier that allows to track them. The only thing it does is adding some extra information about the alias owner - something that does not make any sense to me, given that the whole point of the service is to obscure users' identities. I would understand really usi…

Howdy, relay engineer here.

The random aliases at mozmail.com are certainly the most private option. The subdomain aliases are for convenience so you can make up any alias you want even if you don't have a device on you. (e.g., checking into a hotel, etc.)

As you say - there's always trade-offs involved.

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