yep.. I use a xxx@zoho.com webmail account to register for 100% of anything that required a "regwall" ( registration firewall ) as you are 100% going to get email from them all even if you opt-out.. also any events like webinars or free ebook or whitepaper downloads that say "work email only" allowed I use https://temp-mail.org/ to teach them to not be so stupid about this "only work email address" nonsense..
Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
421–430 of 444 posts
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#422I 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…
The opposite problem also exists.
I had first.last@gmail.com and indeed got a lot of email that isn't mine. A few years back I switched to token1.token2@gmail.com, where token1 = something vaguely similar but not my first name, and token2 = nonsense word. Basically an address that is something between random string and insider joke.
Of course I always include my correct real name in the From: field, fill it correctly in all the relevant fields on forms and have never suggested to anyone that my actual name is "Token1 Token2". Nevertheless it's not uncommon for people to assume that this is my name, and I get people writing to me "Hi Token1," or "Dear Ms. Token2". I even had an expensive electronic item shipped to my correct home address but addressed to Token1 Token2, and returned to sender, since such a person doesn't live here (and likely doesn't exists at all).
Some people just don't understand how email addresses work.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#423Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#424My wife and I have used a unique address for every company/service for 15 years or so (both online and physical stores). We’ve gotten less spam than I expected and from fewer sources. The big ones are dropbox (likely breach related), justworks, [email addresses listed in Whois records - note: Whois privacy features are absolutely worth it], and emails associated with open source projects and businesses that get liste…
Same experience over a little bit more than a decade. Essentially none of the custom email addresses I use have started getting spam. The two cases where I did get a lot of unwanted email was when I was buying a car and looking for a mortgage. However, when I unsubscribed from the emails that was respected. Biggest source of spam in those ten years was for my personal email address, which clearly was leaked from some family member's address book—on multiple instances my address was spammed along with other people in the same social circle.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#425In Germany there are lots of freemail providers. Some of them sell all the contact data to spammers: - web.de - gmx.de/net/com I reproduced this with a new domain, a nowhere occuring email on an email server that does not list its accounts via imap, and a single email from those services to the new email was enough to receive spam afterwards; even when the email wasn't listed anywhere on the web. On a couple other ad…
what's the reddit bot you mention?
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#426TIL about Fastmail's "masked email" feature which integrates directly with 1Password to make it really easy to use unique email addresses when signing up for services.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#427I 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…
There seem to be three other guys who share my name who all think they share my email.
- One guy in London. I get monthly invoices from his daughters childcare centre and the odd email from his solicitor about his investment property. His wife replies to all of these CCing me in too.
- A Native American artist who gets a few emails to purchase his work. I don’t mind this one so much, I found his real email and forward everything on to him.
- Then there’s this other complete douche in the States. Emails about his car servicing reminders, all sorts of totally boring crap. One time I even got a flight booking for him. I though someone had stolen my credit card info and booked a flight in my name at first. I could click into it and change anything. I could have canceled it. I should have picked terrible seats or preordered the worst thing on the menu for him.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#428Some loosly related questions: What are people using to manage their individual address-per-service aliases? Is there a good provider which does this well and lets you manage the mail to each alias without logging out and in to each account? I could see how self hosting with something like mail-in-a-box could do this, but requires a ton of knowledge and maintenance. It would be easy to just set up multiple gmail acco…
Both fastmail and protonmail offer 'masked emails' which will generate a random email address for you and link it to your email account automatically. If the address gets compromised you can block it easily.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#429Very few were deliberately sold; almost all leaked through negligence, ignorance, or simply getting hacked.
Hacked sites seem to be the most common source, and I often find out a service I use has been hacked before any public announcements.
Sales and support teams are the second most common. They use enrichment tools and CRMs that pull data from sources like ClearBit—but they also submit data. This is pervasive in B2B industries. I’ve confronted sales teams about this in the past, and it’s contributed to our company leaving one service for a competitor who isn’t leaking our employee data.
Ever since I noticed this happening, I’ve started using fake names in any forms that are likely to end up in a CRM. Even if they try to guess my primary email from my name—which many of these enrichment services do—I’ll know which sales teams I want to avoid. It occasionally leads to some awkward conversations when I have to explain that I’m not actually the named person and that person doesn’t actually exist, but anyone in sales is going to understand—and, if they’re smart, watch their step.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did this happen instantly? I just now created an account. So far nothing happened. Maybe this is a ploy to get people to sign up.
Not OP, but the terms state this under sec. 5: "BY USING THE SERVICES, YOU AGREE NOT TO: [...] use any of the Zillow Companies’ trademarks as part of your screen name or email address on the Services;"
That's just silly. Thank you for taking the time to read it.