Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

notcheckmark.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 304 posts

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#251

Post by r_hoods_ghost »

al_borland wrote: post #203
MiddleEndian wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Email should have always been a bidirectional address, representing the relationship between the sender and receiver, and not a wide open receiver for anybody who happens to have your address. Ideally, this would also be the case for physical mail. Multiple revokable tokens, not publicly tied to your physical address.

Not having your mailing address tied to your physical address would also have major benefits when people move. Simply update your address with the post office and you're done. The whole idea of revokable tokens would pose an issue for any company that sends bills, as I assume revoking address tokens would be common with them. I'm sure there are many situations like this.

"Simply update your address with the post office and you're done."

Welcome to the 19th century! Which is when mail redirection to a new address was introduced in the UK. I'd be amazed if it wasn't around then or earlier in the USA as well. Simply fill out a form and your mail will be redirected for up to two years (albeit at a cost). Or use a PO box and a mail forwarding service which offers filtering of junk mail. I used one for years when I used to move around a lot for less than £100 a year.

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#252

Post by acjacobson »

I agree with a lot of the other comments here. I've been using a catch-all for years without significant problems. I think the closest to an awkward moment was when a small web comic artist wrote to me a bit confused. I had used the name of her comic to subscribe to her newsletter. I explained what it was and we had a laugh - if anything it perhaps increased a bit of human connection between us that otherwise wouldn't have existed.

I feel as though the author is throwing away a lot of advantages because of some minor social awkwardness that can be worked through, or completely avoided by using a different naming pattern.

We're even starting to see one-off emails created for you automatically (iOS can do this) because of the number of advantages.

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#253

Post by gorgoiler »

The author is really saying “using the other party’s recognisable name as the localpart of your own email address is a mistake.”

I agree with that. As a catch all user of twenty years, I too found this out pretty quickly. The solution is you pretend your catchall domain is some free email service, and then make up an account name that sounds plausible.

jjsamson844 if it’s April 4th 2008. john1713@example.com if it’s January 3rd 2017. daphne.van.hampton@example.com if you want something more creative for your train journey free wifi sign up.

Most of these sign ups get a row in your password database. Remembering them isn’t a problem.

Why bother doing all of this? Because it’s not just spammers that spam you. It’s the companies themselves. Never again do you have to ask someone nicely to unsubscribe / never email you again and hope they’ll comply. You can trivially (procmail + a script) shadow ban them to another imap folder.

(Personally, I move their email to Dead/Match and then my mail filter moves all subsequent emails from them to Dead/Follow, so I can do it all just by moving messages to the right place on my iPhone.)

For the 10 times a year I have to actually email one of these people, yes, it’s a pain to configure my mail client to use the weird address. In the grand scheme of annoying many things, 5 clicks with copy and paste once every few weeks is no big deal.

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#254

Post by 19h »

I don't know a single person who would legitimately infer the affiliation of a person based on the username part of an email address.

I've been using a catch all since forever, foremost to detect when shady companies illegally sell my data -- i.e. I register with shady-store@ci.ax and when I suddenly get unrelated spam to that email I immediately know who's responsible. (Or who got hacked without acknowledging it.)

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#255

Post by codingminds »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #218

Been using a catch all email domain since 2005. I've not had any major issues with it. The entire "calling up and having to explain the username" thing is few and far between. Had that conversation in person and over the phone dozens of times, at most I get a little ask to verify I spoke correctly. Customer support doesn't care. They have people calling them up with an email address of "420hotcock69 at something dot…

For such systems I just spell the domain backwards, which sometimes creates interesting things. Until now there was no system that detected this. E.g. gnusmas@domain.tld instead of samsung@domain.tld

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#256

Post by kortilla »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #251
al_borland wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having your mailing address tied to your physical address would also have major benefits when people move. Simply update your address with the post office and you're done. The whole idea of revokable tokens would pose an issue for any company that sends bills, as I assume revoking address tokens would be common with them. I'm sure there are many situations like this.

"Simply update your address with the post office and you're done." Welcome to the 19th century! Which is when mail redirection to a new address was introduced in the UK. I'd be amazed if it wasn't around then or earlier in the USA as well. Simply fill out a form and your mail will be redirected for up to two years (albeit at a cost). Or use a PO box and a mail forwarding service which offers filtering of junk mail. I…

> Welcome to the 19th century! Which is when mail redirection to a new address was introduced in the UK.

That’s not the same thing. Everyone still has your old address and you need to update it with them. Not terribly painful if you move once every 5 years. Pretty annoying and error prone if you move every 6 months.

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#258

Post by pxeger1 »

My solution to this problem is, while continuing to use unique email addresses for each service, to just put a short random string of letters before the @ instead of the service's name (e.g. jcnclp@example.com instead of hilton@example.com). They're all just stored in my password manager, so I don't need to remember what address I used for what service.

Re: Using a catch-all domain is a mistake

#260

Post by selfhoster11 »

codingminds wrote: post #255
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #218

Been using a catch all email domain since 2005. I've not had any major issues with it. The entire "calling up and having to explain the username" thing is few and far between. Had that conversation in person and over the phone dozens of times, at most I get a little ask to verify I spoke correctly. Customer support doesn't care. They have people calling them up with an email address of "420hotcock69 at something dot…

For such systems I just spell the domain backwards, which sometimes creates interesting things. Until now there was no system that detected this. E.g. gnusmas@domain.tld instead of samsung@domain.tld

What you're referring to as Gnusmas, is in fact properly called GNU/Christmas (the Christmas celebrational event kernel with the GNU userland, err, I mean decorations and way of celebration).
Post reply on HN