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Comment by dave2000 | Hacker News Reader

dave2000

For sharing a few email addresses? $0 I'd imagine. It's not like its anything important like credentials for shopping/banking or other details which could be used in identify theft. Worst case scenario; google's spam filters have to work a little harder. You'd not even notice. Yes, some people have chosen to run their own mail servers for some reason and those people might conceivably get a bit more spam for a while.

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> Yes, some people have chosen to run their own mail servers for some reason and those people might conceivably get a bit more spam for a while.

Once your email is out there, there's no going back.

Email addresses are personally identifiable information, and revealing a relationship between a business and a person is potentially very dangerous.

For example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36247186

You guys should all switch to disposable email addresses. It solves so many problems. If your address is leaked like that, no big deal, you just delete that alias. If a password is leaked along, again having website specific emails will make it very difficult to correlate your credentials with another website. If you start receiving spam on that address you just delete it. And so it ceases to be personally identifiable information.

Should I use a disposable name and a disposable address when I buy physical goods from an online retailer?

I actually start to think you should, without joking. At least the name.

If you look at the past 5 years, there is almost not a single major website that hasn't been hacked and hasn't leaked personal data. Not only do I see no sign of improvement, but it is rather accelerating. Leaking information on 30m+ people is now becoming common and barely makes the news outside of a few specialized websites like HN.

If you have a better alternative than feeding garbage data to websites who want to collect data they won't need (why would an online retailer give a shit that they are shipping a product to someone called Mr X rather than Mr Y?), I want to hear it.

Why not? What's the cost? What's the benefit? I create new accounts for all sites I use, including hacker news, every year or so.

Email addresses are absolutely personal data, and in the EU companies need to protect that data from being leaked.

(There would probably not be a fine; the company would be investigated and warned by the various regulators).

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