My biggest spam vector is an email address that is old enough that I used it on usenet back in the day. Pretty much any email that was used on email ended up in every spam mailing list.
Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
41–50 of 359 posts
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#42Having your email in a mailto: link is no longer the spam vector that it used to be. I’ve had my writing email posted as such on my website for over a decade and it gets no more than one spam per week and those are all caught by the gmail filter.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#43Is the fear of "people selling your email to spammers" a modern myth, or are spam filters that good? Email databases for sale are not always for spam or malware. They are often used for tracking and cross marketing calculations. Placing a companies name in the address will signal a canary and they may likely filter your contact out of their database or at least flag it and treat it differently. I've been using email…
> A few vendors got upset that I had their name in the address
I have had this happen a few times.
> Canaries are also a good indicator to detect if a company has been compromised.
Yep, this is a fantastic use case.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#44I too have done this for almost years and it's magical. So easy to see who has been compromised. Also a great protection against phishing because "You need to update your Capital One password" that isn't addressed to "capitalone@mydomain.com" is an instant red flag.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#45Is the fear of "people selling your email to spammers" a modern myth, or are spam filters that good? Email databases for sale are not always for spam or malware. They are often used for tracking and cross marketing calculations. Placing a companies name in the address will signal a canary and they may likely filter your contact out of their database or at least flag it and treat it differently. I've been using email…
> A few vendors got upset that I had their name in the address I have had this happen a few times. > Canaries are also a good indicator to detect if a company has been compromised. Yep, this is a fantastic use case.
This is exactly my use-case and experience after many years of custom catch-all'ing.
I've noticed a couple breaches, and also a few unexpected transfers of my email address between semi-related parties.
Just once it appeared an address was sold via a marketing list, after filling out a lead-form for a free online conference hosted by multiple companies that you've seen on HN.
Surprisingly, unsubscribing tends to stop emails from everyone.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#46Is the fear of "people selling your email to spammers" a modern myth, or are spam filters that good? Email databases for sale are not always for spam or malware. They are often used for tracking and cross marketing calculations. Placing a companies name in the address will signal a canary and they may likely filter your contact out of their database or at least flag it and treat it differently. I've been using email…
> A few vendors got upset that I had their name in the address
When it happens, I say "this is because your company is so important to me that it has its own mailbox to be prioritized accordingly"
It worked every single time :)
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#47A simpler way to do this is to append the company name to whatever gmail you're using e.g. if my email is bob@gmail.com you could use bob+amazon@gmail.com. No matter what you put after the '+' it'll still get sent to you
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#48Donate 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.
Seriously. Donate to planned parenthood once and you basically ensure that the company spends more over the next 10 years bothering you than your donation was worth. And I like PP but goddamn, emails coming from a swath of domains, a neverending stream of physical mail. I won't donate to them again because the amount of contact they try to have with me is absurd.
Huh, I donated about a year back and, while I think I did get some messages, I unsubscribed and haven't seen any since. How long ago was your donation?
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#49A simpler way to do this is to append the company name to whatever gmail you're using e.g. if my email is bob@gmail.com you could use bob+amazon@gmail.com. No matter what you put after the '+' it'll still get sent to you
The problem is that plenty of poorly-coded signup forms reject the plus character as invalid within an email address.
Re: Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam
#50Meanwhile I do basically the same thing (different provider)
I could (and should) shame at least a dozen decently well-known organizations, just ridiculously low on my list to go digging again.
Surely partly due to filters, but also our activities/circles - and the control over their data. A lot of compromises lead to leaked lists of addresses to both spam and target for gaining access