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Firefox Relay

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Re: Firefox Relay

#141
post #31
post #8

This is cool, however, personally I feel like for my use case that integration with 1Password and Fastmail is better because I don't want to depend on a browser that I cannot use everywhere to manage this. In the same way that I avoid Sign in with Apple - what am I supposed to do when I need to Sign in without Apple?! I find 1P+FM is a much more cross-platform solution. However, I commend Firefox for creating this fu…

(Relay engineer here.) While we provide a Firefox extension with which generating an alias is just a click away, you're not dependent on Firefox specifically: you can generate and access your generated alias through the web interface at https://relay.firefox.com in any browser.

A little bit unrelated question, but since we're talking about being available anywhere. Is there a reason the extension is not available for Firefox on Android? I'm thinking about using Relay but I'm afraid it won't be easy to add aliases from mobile.

Re: Firefox Relay

#142
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and part of that setup is proper sfp setup? Eg allow sending from Gmail with a from on your domain?

I don't see how it's specific to sending from thunderbird. It's a general issue if you want to use a domain for mailing.

It's not spesific to the mua, no. But as thread starter (ed: first responder) said:

> Word of advice for anybody doing this: make sure you have a way to SEND email using one of your aliased addresses

So a) you need a mua like thunderbird that let's you set FROM header - and b) your domain need to be setup to allow your smtp server(s) to send from your domain (sfp).

Re: Firefox Relay

#143
post #125
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I work on Relay and I do the same :) While the approach is great, especially in situations away from my computer where I can't generate a new alias in advance, working on it I discovered that using Relay still has a couple of advantages: - My other addresses are unguessable. - It's far easier to block emails sent to a single alias. With my own domain, I'll have to go and add a filter into which I copy-paste the…

What is Relay going to do when the domain ends up on one of the many "disposable email address" blocklists?

We're actively reaching out to maintainers of such lists (see e.g. [1]) to get us removed, and take a number of measures to make that more palatable (see also [1]). And of course Relay is a bit different from services like Mailinator, where email addresses are usually actually single-use: Relay addresses remain active until their owner actively disables them. Possibly in the future it might also be possible to bring your own domain, but I don't think we have any concrete plans for that that we can share.

That said, no solution is perfect, and I expect that there will likely always be situations where you will be forced to fall back to a regular email address.

[1] https://github.com/wesbos/burner-email-providers/pull/339

Re: Firefox Relay

#144
post #92

I'm conflicted about this. For me, the best implementation of private alias is the Apple one: %randomwords%[at]icloud.com. It's way harder to wildcard block [at]icloud.com, as there are legit users of the icloud domain, than a wildcard block for: [at]mozmail.com. Unfortunately, using the apple implementation is just one more stone into their walled garden. I really wish firefox could create a legit free [at]firefox (…

> 1. They bought Pocket (which I loved) and now it's on life support. Why do you say it's on life support?

No significant improvements in the last however many years. Yeap, it's a simple service but they constantly fail on the basics such as parsing the complete article.

Over the years I had several instances of widely popular sites not being completely parsed, missing paragraphs or images, to the point where I had to manually check every time I've saved something there. Whereas, on instapaper or safari reader mode, it parsed perfectly. I've submitted several fixes requests for such sites and they "promised they would look into it", nothing happened.

Yeap, I was a paying costumer and a heavy user for over three years, I finally gave up and closed my subscription.

Re: Firefox Relay

#145
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Relay engineer here.) While we provide a Firefox extension with which generating an alias is just a click away, you're not dependent on Firefox specifically: you can generate and access your generated alias through the web interface at https://relay.firefox.com in any browser.

A little bit unrelated question, but since we're talking about being available anywhere. Is there a reason the extension is not available for Firefox on Android? I'm thinking about using Relay but I'm afraid it won't be easy to add aliases from mobile.

No technical one I think; probably mostly a matter of resources (same reason it's not on other browsers yet).

That said, the extension is mostly useful for generating new aliases. If you've already used it on desktop to generate an alias for a website, then regular cross-browser sync of form autofill data should make it easy to reuse the same alias on mobile.

Re: Firefox Relay

#146

So this is anonaddy but with unlimited replies? Pretty cool! I just signed up for purelymail recently, I wish I had heard of this sooner, but it's better than never. Is there any way to create aliases on the fly? Something like creating a new alias automatically when an email is received?

The extension allows you to create aliases on the fly (although the free version has a limit of 5 aliases total). Note that the extension is at this time only available for Firefox on desktop.

Alternatively, if you have a Premium subscription, you can set up a catchall subdomain for yourself, so that e.g. anyarbitraryidentifier@ranguna.mozmail.com gets forward to you without having to create the alias in advance. Of course, this has the disadvantage of being able to associate that alias with other aliases you create.

Re: Firefox Relay

#147

You can create aliases on Gmail with "+". firstname.lastname+spam@gmail.com. Probably works with other email providers too.

Be careful with this. I once ordered something with Dell, and while their front-end system would accept my email address just fine, apparently one of their back-end systems choked on it, and not only did my order get stuck in limbo somewhere, but their customer service agents also couldn't easily fix it for me since their systems weren't able to handle this properly either.

Re: Firefox Relay

#148
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried signing up for Relay Premium (from France), Stripe is telling me that "The currency of this subscription isn't valid for the country associated with your payment"...

Hi! I'm the Product Manager on Relay. I'm sorry about this! We've deployed a fix this morning. Let us know if you're still having this issue and we can help troubleshoot it further.

I'm having same issues with PayPal as option, coming from Finland

Edit: looking FAQ it appears it's not even available in Finland, I'm active user of relay and i saw the upgrade option, not reading the FAQ at all.

Re: Firefox Relay

#149
post #87

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.

It's worth noting that many recipients will use SPF and DMARC to avoid accepting "forged" email like this -- spammers make very heavy use of the historical lack of authorisation for sending mail as if from a particular address.

Re: Firefox Relay

#150

I've been using SimpleLogin for a while now which does just this. The thing I like about SimpleLogin, is that it can be self-hosted and they have an open source app on F-Droid.

My issue with SimpleLogin is that they mutate the emails forwarded to your inbox in a manner that breaks features based on the sender. If you're using gmail's email grouping feature it gets thrown off by this. I am not sure how I would go about it, but I would guess that spam detection would become somewhat (more) difficult too.
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