Not a myth. 20 years on, still receiving spam to an email address I used to order a male enhancement product.
still receiving spam to an email address I used to order a male enhancement product
Encyclopedia Britannica?
Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
171–180 of 359 posts
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#172There’s a single reason that I gave up on this method: having to send outbound mail to these companies. You sign up for a health plan using healthplan@example.com. Great, until you need to send them a document. You send it from myrealaddress@example.com, and they write back and say hey, that’s not the account on file, etc. So now you have to set up healthplan@example.com, configure it in your mail client, etc. And no…
Fastmail allows sending from any address, the client supports it easily. There is also a few self-hostable mail clients that allow it.
Historically I used a more convoluted method. When I used to use migadu (dont use them) I had a little script that would check the first line of any email I sent myself for a target email and resend it from the receive address. It was janky but worked.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#173Donate to a political candidate or large non-profit. Those are where I see the most sharing of addresses. I have been doing the same sort of custom emails.
Donate to a political candidate or large non-profit
Can confirm.
Joined an art museum in a major city.
Within a month, the unique e-mail address was getting spam from the aquarium, the science museum, the local PBS television station, and some museums I never even knew existed.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#174Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#175People that have sold my account immediately:
- my last lettings agency. Lettings agencies are scum.
People that have been compromised:
- an aws account (!) - local city council
I use a ..@ setup, the nonce has only protected from various colleagues being major PITAs.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fastmail offers a masked email feature for one-time email addresses: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/4406536368911-Ma...
The 1Password integration doesn’t work for me. Not sure why :-(
Works fine for me. Maybe you have some conflicting settings enabled?
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#177After Robinhood's data breach, I get tons of cryptocurrency-related phishing emails sent to "robinhood@mydomain.com". I've had a few other vendors sell / lose my email, such as an escape room in another city.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#178I have. Signed up at MyFitnessPal with a unique handcrafted address (alias), ended up getting spam a few months later (and still do, several years later).
Confronted them about it and got accused of being sloppy and hacked... I am certainly not the smartest person alive, but I'm not a complete clown.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#179I use an alternate spam filter process. I use a "+" sign in my gmail address. So I would subscribe to a promotion/giveaway with username+company@gmail.com. This is a great way to catch which promotion/company sells your email address to unwanted companies. Caveat, sometimes an unsubscribe website can't handle the "+" symbol in an email and you'll continue to get spam. So, just add a filter for that "TO" email to forw…
What's stopping websites from just removing '+company' from 'username+company@gmail.com' and emailing you at 'username@gmail.com'? Even if the website you provide it to doesn't do that. Anyone who buys it can. I'm guessing the answer is, "Most companies are too lazy", but that seems like a weak behavior to depend on.
From having experience in email marketing, I highly doubt companies are editing email addresses before send. But you are right though, I have had signups that denied the "+" via JS.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#180I definitely get spam at special addresses. Minted (data breach) is one, and another company sold my info for similar interests.