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Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

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Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#271

Post by wccrawford »

narag wrote: post #23

I mostly use one single address, but I can tell you exactly where all the spam comes from: idiots whose name is the same as mine. They give my address as if it belonged to them. Probably they created addresses like narag33@server and they believe that it's narag@server instead. So not only I receive all the spam from dubious sites that they suscribed to, but also their legitimate mail from lists and friends. My names…

I had this happen to me recently. It turns out there's a highschool somewhere named after someone with my same name. Instead of name50@gmail.com, they put name@gmail.com on some of their advertising for the event, and other people just typed it in wrong and forgot the 50. I got a fair few emails from that, even after telling their coordinator about the problem.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#272

Post by bstpierre »

I used special emails for my kids’ savings accounts at a major brokerage, and then started getting weird emails to one of them. This was on a private domain and the addresses weren’t really guessable, so that’s how I knew they had been breached before they announced it weeks or months later.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#273

Post by raverbashing »

Arnavion wrote: post #223
YPPH wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, I use service@domain quite often. I didn't give thought to this possibility. I'm quite sure the reason will be that this service emails others on "your behalf" and probably does something like placing your email address in the "From" field or in the body of correspondence. I assume they are concerned about phishing or catfishing emails purporting to be from the service. This doesn't appear to be an adequate so…

Something like $(hex(hmac(secret_key, service)))@domain could solve that. It would also mean service can't pretend to be another-service@domain when spamming you. Though who knows, maybe hex addresses will look fake / malicious and trigger a ban anyway.

It's an email, not a "secret", something like 3 or 4 hex (or even better, base58) digits should be more than enough

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#275

Post by EvanAnderson »

bstpierre wrote: post #272

I used special emails for my kids’ savings accounts at a major brokerage, and then started getting weird emails to one of them. This was on a private domain and the addresses weren’t really guessable, so that’s how I knew they had been breached before they announced it weeks or months later.

Similar situation here. I've informed a handful of small site operators about their data breaches and been able to give them a lower bound for the breach date based on receiving spam.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#276

Post by kolinko »

dmje wrote: post #216
narag wrote: post #23

I mostly use one single address, but I can tell you exactly where all the spam comes from: idiots whose name is the same as mine. They give my address as if it belonged to them. Probably they created addresses like narag33@server and they believe that it's narag@server instead. So not only I receive all the spam from dubious sites that they suscribed to, but also their legitimate mail from lists and friends. My names…

Quite gratifying to read that I'm not alone in this. I was really early into Gmail so have first.last@ and get a lot of stuff emailed to me that is exactly as you describe - not spam, just mistaken address. Hotel reservations, golf clubs, Republican party bullshit, hilarious copies of order receipts from gun shops... (The last one of the above I replied to - it was an order for a rifle scope. I sent what I thought wa…

Hear hear.

I have lastname@gmail.com and keep receiving various e-mails intended for people with my surname. Insurance documents and other semi-confidential stuff included.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#277

Post by invalidusernam3 »

bstpierre wrote: post #272

I used special emails for my kids’ savings accounts at a major brokerage, and then started getting weird emails to one of them. This was on a private domain and the addresses weren’t really guessable, so that’s how I knew they had been breached before they announced it weeks or months later.

Should have shorted their stock if they're public

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#278

Post by captn3m0 »

Arnavion wrote: post #223
YPPH wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, I use service@domain quite often. I didn't give thought to this possibility. I'm quite sure the reason will be that this service emails others on "your behalf" and probably does something like placing your email address in the "From" field or in the body of correspondence. I assume they are concerned about phishing or catfishing emails purporting to be from the service. This doesn't appear to be an adequate so…

Something like $(hex(hmac(secret_key, service)))@domain could solve that. It would also mean service can't pretend to be another-service@domain when spamming you. Though who knows, maybe hex addresses will look fake / malicious and trigger a ban anyway.

Zomato refused to change my email to zomato@ (you need to create a support ticket). However, they agreed on otamoz@ (strrev(zomato)).

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#279

Post by leephillips »

When I started doing this, many years ago, I fully expected to see spam coming to some of these addresses. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, so far, not one of these addresses has been compromised. All my spam comes to addresses that are essentially public, or random names, as I use a catchall.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#280

Post by johnjones4 »

Not sold, but shared internally across multiple clients with no functional opt out: Once Democratic party digital firms like NGPVAN and ActBlue get your email, be prepared to get multiple emails per day from candidates across the country you've never heard of (much less could even vote for) constantly sending you garbage emails. The unsubscribe buttons do nothing.
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