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An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

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Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#131

Post by m-p-3 »

sinatra wrote: post #96
Vinnl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla also has Firefox Relay: https://relay.firefox.com/ (Disclosure: I'm on the Relay team.)

If relay gets popular, won’t some services simply start to block relay subdomain for registration to make it ineffective? Just like 10minutesemail etc are blocked in many places.

You can flag them to the Relay team and AFAIK they'll reach out to the domain that blacklisted them with the hope to make them change their mind.

A service that doesn't accept an email proxy during registration is not going to respect my privacy, so IMO not worth of using.

Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#132

Post by Gigachad »

gman83 wrote: post #117

I must be the only person who doesn't receive spam. I mean I do, but it goes into the spam folder. I've never really understood why I should use something like this. I have my email address on my website anyway, so it's not like it's private information.

I have been using my current domain for 3 years now and I don't receive any spam in my spam box either. Email spam seems like it was a solved problem years ago. Now its all just newsletters which go right through the spam filter..

Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#133

Post by m-p-3 »

Kwpolska wrote: post #45
gzer0 wrote: post #34

The only thing really holding me back from wanting to use iCloud mailing services is the current implementation of MFA on Apple services. It would be fine if you were allowed to use normal MFA options, but no, that is not possible. Instead, you MUST confirm your logins via already signed in Apple-devices only. There is no other way. Cannot use phone number (for good reason, but that is besides the point), cannot have…

SMS is available as a fallback 2FA method for Apple ID.

I only wish they'd support standard TOTP as well, like everyone else.

Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#134

Post by IAmEveryone »

b1n wrote: post #81
rootusrootus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do a simplified version of this. I just use a catchall account with Fastmail and then pick email addresses in the domain randomly. If someone abuses the address, I block it. I specifically do not use addresses that make it obvious what my strategy is. I end up just using a name and number that would look right at home on gmail. I'm also not trying to stop tracking, so much as I'm trying to have my own semi-permanen…

I've been thinking of a new way to use my email... - Only use one email address: hi@example.com - Always add a filter: hi+hn@example.com - Send all emails without a filter to SPAM Since it's not a common strategy, it is much more likely that spammers remove the +hn before sending an email than add one.

Gmail also ignores the dot. If you choose a 17-character mailbox name, you can use any one of 2^16 different patterns of placing dots between them.

Capitalisation could also be used for such a purpose, but may be more likeely to accidentally get stripped.

Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#135

Post by Gigachad »

callalex wrote: post #113
earthboundkid wrote: post #101

How do I report Hide My Email abuse? Someone used it to send a nasty email to my company. I couldn’t figure out how to report it. My guess is there is no way to do it and there won’t be until after some reporters make it the Apple scandal of the week when there’s no other news.

Are you sure that was the actual sender? Email allows you to write whatever you want in the From field.

If your email host is half decent it will automatically move these emails to spam and plaster huge fraud warnings all over an email which does this.

Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#136

Post by Gigachad »

baxtr wrote: post #97

The great thing about Apple doing stuff like that is the sheer scale they reach. Sure, there were many services like that before, and many of us have used them. But making it an integral part of iOS can drive mass adoption. You have to credit Apple for that.

There is also a trust component. I do trust Apple to not abuse this product or shut it down in the future much more than I do some no name privacy company.

Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#137

Post by heldergg »

vernie wrote: post #41
binwiederhier wrote: post #39

I have a unique email address for every single service that I sign up for, similar to this, though selfhosted. I've been doing this for years and it works wonderfully. If someone misuses my email address, or gets annoying, I can simply turn off the address. Bam! It's the easiest Postfix config in the universe, essentially just: virtual_alias_domains = domain1.com domain2.com virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/vir…

Aside from being self-hosted how does this differ from +suffix Gmail addresses?

Plus addressing is not unique to gmail nor it was invented by google.

For example, to enable plus addressing in postfix is only a matter of defining:

recipient_delimiter = +

Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#138

Post by JimDabell »

VTimofeenko wrote: post #99
b1n wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking of a new way to use my email... - Only use one email address: hi@example.com - Always add a filter: hi+hn@example.com - Send all emails without a filter to SPAM Since it's not a common strategy, it is much more likely that spammers remove the +hn before sending an email than add one.

I have tried this approach. Unfortunately, some services will not accept plus sign in the username no matter what RFC says. On top of that, some services seem to not like seeing the service name in the username. I.e. foo.tld will refuse sending email to mailbox+foo@mydomain.tld.

Some mail providers support receiving mail on arbitrary hostnames, so you can set up a wildcard MX record and then use mailbox@foo.example.com instead. This avoids email validation issues with plus addresses, spammers don’t try removing any parts of the hostname, and I think in the many years I have been using it I’ve only run into a problem with including the service name once or possibly twice.

Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#139

Post by JimDabell »

gzer0 wrote: post #53
Kwpolska wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is available as a fallback 2FA method for Apple ID.

Unfortunately, only one phone number is allowed per Apple ID. And I do not have multiple phone numbers to expend for an SMS only 2fa option here.

This is not correct. Go to https://appleid.apple.com/account/manage and you will see that you can add multiple trusted phone numbers under Account Security.

Re: An Ode to Apple’s Hide My Email

#140

Post by beeboop »

rootusrootus wrote: post #68
binwiederhier wrote: post #39

I have a unique email address for every single service that I sign up for, similar to this, though selfhosted. I've been doing this for years and it works wonderfully. If someone misuses my email address, or gets annoying, I can simply turn off the address. Bam! It's the easiest Postfix config in the universe, essentially just: virtual_alias_domains = domain1.com domain2.com virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/vir…

I do a simplified version of this. I just use a catchall account with Fastmail and then pick email addresses in the domain randomly. If someone abuses the address, I block it. I specifically do not use addresses that make it obvious what my strategy is. I end up just using a name and number that would look right at home on gmail. I'm also not trying to stop tracking, so much as I'm trying to have my own semi-permanen…

I've been happily using fastmail for years and I think I'm going to be forced to stop. My outbound emails are constantly getting caught in spam and it recently cost me a job offer.
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