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Become unbannable from your email

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Re: Become unbannable from your email

#131

Post by remuskaos »

imiric wrote: post #43
jrm4 wrote: post #37

Been doing this for years, and surprised he didn't seem to mention the other benefit: "infinity" email addresses. Oh, rando burger spot wants an email for some free fries? Great, hit me up at randoburgerspot@"mydomain".com .

I like that as well, but it's exhausting having to explain every time that, no, I don't in fact work at randoburgerspot...

I've been using my own domain for mail like that for over fifteen years now, and it happened only once that I've had to explain "no I don't work at $drugstore" when giving my "drugstore@mydomain.tld". And even that one time only got me like a weird look, but no further discussion. I enter my mail address into some form myself most of the time, after all.

Re: Become unbannable from your email

#132

Post by marssaxman »

layer8 wrote: post #104
marssaxman wrote: post #19

I've been doing this for years, though I don't really think of it as "having a backup" so much as "using an IMAP client". Works fine. It's really useful to be able to make up a new email address for every company who wants one; they each get their own folder. If I get any unexpected mail, it's obvious where it came from and easy to deal with, though in practice this rarely happens.

The caveat is that if your account gets banned, the IMAP access will also be blocked. An email forward is more likely to remain active, is the point made in TFA.

There is nobody but me who can ban my account. If the hosting service I rent my mail server from chose to drop me as a client, I could sign up with a different service, transfer the domain name, and keep on going with minimal disruption.

Re: Become unbannable from your email

#133

Post by jenadine »

daveidol wrote: post #119
paranoidrobot wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this, too - but I've been running into more and more companies that block you from using their company name in the email address. It also results in awkward conversations if you have to talk to staff. I had ordered some pet supplies online a while ago registered like this. Then I go in store more recently and they ask "Do you have an account with us?", I give them that email when asked, which causes them to paus…

That’s pretty funny. If you use a password manager you could obviously just put something random instead of the company name.

Or just rot13 or some scheme like that.

Re: Become unbannable from your email

#134

Post by SchemaLoad »

Neywiny wrote: post #112
xp84 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a LOT more confused looks, especially because I stupidly used a subdomain for this purpose. Imagine like, burgers@e.abc.co.uk when someone is expecting an @gmail.com. If I could think of an unambiguous .com, .net, or .org that is a pronounceable word that wasn't registered already by 2001, I'd be maybe willing to try this again.

Same here. I have a .dev tld (Ooh ahh very fancy). My email is [first]@[last].dev . The amount of times they go "@ gmail?" Is astonishing. These are people who all day, countless times per day, for countless years, are collecting emails (front desk clerks, support reps, whatever), and not one email in the history of emails is the format blah@blah.blah@gmail.com, but somehow they think mine is. Should've just stuck wi…

I've had firstname@lastname.me for a few years now and so far haven't had any confusion. They just read it back to me to make sure it's correct. I used to do the businesname@mydomain and that caused lots of confusion, especially when support ask me for my email and I can't remember what it was. And they are confused because my email has their name in it.

Re: Become unbannable from your email

#135

Post by SchemaLoad »

1oooqooq wrote: post #102
bb88 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen places that won't allow a "+" saying it's an invalid character.

ah! the fathers of slop vibe code: copy paste coders. the "validate email input regex" that mistakenly rejects plus sign have been copy pasted for so long it might live on forever.

Could be by design. They want you using your main gmail address and not signing up multiple times.

Re: Become unbannable from your email

#136

Post by SchemaLoad »

xp84 wrote: post #83
morshu9001 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well your recourse is repointing the domain

It's worth pointing out just in case someone might forget/not think of it... Don't register your domain or DNS with Google Domains / GCP if you host your email with Google Workspace... since if you get locked out of the Google account you could be unable to update your DNS. The saddest thing though is that in some ways Gmail is harder to hack into than some registrars. I remember a postmortem write-up from a guy who…

There was also the time where the itch.io domain got nuked for a day because a copyright bot sent an automated complaint to the domain registrar and the registrar just immediately took the domain offline.

Re: Become unbannable from your email

#137

Post by strogonoff »

greggsy wrote: post #129
daveidol wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of these services get their domains blocklisted eventually, sadly.

Companies tried to block Apple’s Hide My Email in the months after its release, but I haven’t been blocked in years now. I’m assuming they quickly realised that it was here the stay.

Fun fact: Apple blocks using Hide My Email with itself, which I found out once I tried to use it in my contact details when ordering a phone. Their online system reported unknown error when placing the order until I specified a Gmail address instead.

Re: Become unbannable from your email

#138

Post by Evidlo »

bb88 wrote: post #96
robotresearcher wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail has a limited version of this. It leaks your real address, but it makes filtering easy. + @gmail.com steve+randoburger@gmail.com

I've seen places that won't allow a "+" saying it's an invalid character.

I use PurelyMail to get email redirection with wildcard support. Costs $4/year when I use it with Gmail for the actual storage.

I use an underscore so my addresses look like evidlo_[placholder]@example.com

Re: Become unbannable from your email

#140

Post by mcv »

I think there are two pieces of legislation needed here:

1. Email providers need to be required to forward your email to your new address for a year if you ever lose your email for any reason.

2. Domain registrars need to save your domain name for a year and allow you ample time to reregister if you ever let it lapse for any reason.

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