Live data from Hacker News

Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

notcheckmark.com

181–190 of 304 posts

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#182
post #49
post #3

reminds me a bit of the family member who owns firstname@lastname.com and can't get random non technical people to believe that their email address domain really is lastname.com "but don't you mean at gmail.co..." no

There's a 199X NYTimes article about how prestigious lastname.com is. Maybe someone can find it in the archives

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/04/technology/the-great-doma... & https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/we...

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#185
I use 33mail with a custom domain and I use it as a permanent actually working unsubscribe button. I’ll sign up with a service for whatever, as soon as they start sending me spam and I no longer need the account, instead of trusting their unsubscribe button, I disable the account and never think about them again, been doing this for about 2 years I must have over 100 disabled accounts at this point.

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#187
1. I disagree nothing, I use catch-all and never had awkward conversations like the author had. Who cares, it's an email. I repeat it twice.

2. Government has transparency laws, they didn't sell his email used to support "bernie" rather due to voting laws and donation laws, that information is public and is posted and given away for free that is why you should err to use your email address to communicate with federal or state bodies because they are required to follow state laws for transparency and federal laws.

Forging or creating an actual account/alias to then "send" from if the email doesn't exist is a trivial process, you can even do it from a shell even in Microsoft Exchange and PostFix.

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#188

Title says that using a catch all domain (whatever that is) is a mistake, but the bulk of the article about it being a mistake to use the other party's company name as the local part of a throwaway e-mail address which you use for communicating with that party. There is nothing about the catch all aspect being a mistake. You don't have to give a Hilton hotel an address like hilton@example.com; it could be bob-2022-05…

Fastmail also has features similar to this. Aliases and randomized masked email. The web ui helps you send email from the masked email as well.

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#189
post #65

I'm also doing this and see multiple benefits. However I've recently been bitten by my catch-all, using a money transfer service with the email worldremit@mycatchall.com (guess the company). When they asked for additional documents to verify my account after many months, they never received my reply and I ended up banned. I could not login anymore. When I reached out from another email address, they refused to proces…

There's something even worse than the "please write to us from your original email". On a number of occasions, I've had some random people use my email address to sign-up for something and then occasionally I have to actually contact a random company to unsubscribe me and/or delete the account.

When this happens, I've had a few insane companies insist that I send them a screenshot from my gmail app/web page, etc. to "prove" it's my email address. I have steadfastly refused despite some rather angry responses insisting that I have to. I have responded very strongly and politely that I have to do no such thing as I have no business relationship with their company. Usually once I point out that they're sending someone else's private information (receipts, etc.) to a completely unrelated individual and they could be held liable they relent and delete/unsubscribe my email address.

The most insane of these was when Uber started emailing me someone's trip receipts every time they took a trip for someone in Australia. When I contacted them, they refused to believe me and said it wasn't possible. I ended up finding one of their technical VPs on LinkedIn, messaged them blindly, and "mysteriously" it resolved itself two days later with a polite apology.

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#190
>> Especially since all these companies ask for and verify your cell phone number – which is way more static than any email address.

My domain is 27 years old, my oldest phone number is 5 years old (and it's a virtual phone number from textnow). Yes, I still receive spam to email addresses I gave out 20+ years ago. The thing is, I'm avid traveler, and phone numbers do not cross borders very well. Email does.

The biggest hurdle has been "For security purposes, write to us from your original email", which requires me spoofing the FROM line in my email client.

Post reply on HN