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Comment by rubyn00bie | Hacker News Reader

Not to be an asshole but I absolutely loathe this... these sort of things are why I'm forced to give my email address to organizations I don't trust. This is offensive to my sense of privacy and I wish people would stop doing it.

Too often now sites/app want a login for no benefit other than to SPAM me with newsletters and crap I never wanted. That's why I use disposable email addresses, you're providing me no real value, at least sight unseen, but I must give you something I know is valuable-- my contact information.

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I add the name of whomever I'm mailing whenever I enter my address, like "cryptarch+microsoft@gmail.com".

If they remove the "+microsoft" portion mailing me, that email is sent to my spambox and reported to spamcop, because I did not sign up with that address; the address I signed up with has the +etc infix.

Eventually I figure companies will get wise to this and I'll have to set up my own server which does the same trick with an underscore instead of the "+" sign.

Not all email validators respect the + symbol.

Most do however, and setting up your own server and making it use underscores or dashes for that purpose is one way around that.

Related tutorial on how to set that up in Postfix: https://www.stevejenkins.com/blog/2011/03/how-to-use-address...

With gmail you can use periods in the email address and gmail will ignore them. i.e. bob.smith@gmail.com is the same as bobsmith@gmail.com or even bo.bsmith@gmail.com.

I did that for a bit, but there's only so many variations and remembering which email belongs to which service is not nearly as straight forward.

Switch to Fastmail.

You can make addresses on the fly like microsoft@cryptarch.fastmail.com (which will automatically be resolved and sent to cryptarch+microsoft@fastmail.com) and you'll save the hassle of having to run and maintain your own mail server.

gmail supports having +stuff in your email address too. it's fairly easy to set up filters to put stuff into folders based on the email it got sent to.

That's different from what I described above.

You don't use a '+' at all in the fastmail email addresses you give out.

For example, say with gmail you have name+stuff@gmail.com, with fastmail you could use that if you wanted, but you can also use stuff@name.fastmail.com

If fastmail receives mail on that address, it converts it for you as if it had been sent to name+stuff@fastmail.com instead.

This happens entirely on the fly so you can make 'proper looking' emails without a '+'

That doesn't help if they sell your email though, because you don't know what company to match the spam with.

I use mynamemicrosoft@mydomain.tld for each service, and i catch every email regardless of mail address.

Sure they can manually fool me or use more sophisticated regex to find their service name (and i can obfuscate it), but in practically all cases i know which service has leaked my address if i get spam against a certain address that's not the service i signed up for.

The +company trick doesn't work everywhere anymore.

I recommend using a personal domain and a mail service that offers catch-all filters. Stuff regex on that and you can also filter all emails of this type into a specific folder.

If they're not providing you with any value, then don't give them your email address.

If it's just a Regex check then you can just use dslfkjsdlfj@fdsjfs.com. If it requires you to click on a verification link in the email then that is quite a high bar for you to go through to obtain something of `no value`.

Most places aren't using a regex only unless someone high up is trying to covertly respect user privacy.

If it's a walled garden, which more are becoming because it's the path to VC money, you have no way to know until you're inside.

Most organizations who do this crap also require you click a link in the email to activate the account.

I just give out automatically expiring email addresses. here's an email address which will work until Thursday and then start bouncing:

2017-03-30@tmp.grepular.com

I didn't have to click a button or anything to create it. It just exists, thanks to the pattern. Here's how I did it:

https://www.grepular.com/Automatically_Expiring_Email_Addres...

These guys let you add your own domain

https://www.guerrillamail.com/

Hi Exuma. FYI, I do check custom domain names pointing to disposable email address providers. If you add your own domain name, it will be also blocked.

Well you are an asshole then. Just kidding!

But not really :/

I think the mistake was using the word "block". A general purpose "email type classifier" might be useful.

No need to block the temporary email, but you might use that information for other purposes, like having it be some weight to a fraud detection system. Note, not calling it out as fraud outright, but using it as one data point among others.

+1, and it all depends on how the website owners, SaaS providers, etc use it. They may choose to block or let them in with nice notifications message then block later.

I just provide the tool for those in need.

Damn right, this is straight up evil technology, with high probability of harming society.

I have a secondary email address as a throw-away email, just for the purpose of registration, i.e. my-other-email@gmail.com.

This is the solution. If OP can't manage this, then OP isn't that worried about privacy.

I don't see how you can say my approach, a disposable email address, is less secure or privacy focused than yours. It makes zero sense to me.

Please by all means explain this to me.

I'm 13 days late but, I'm not arguing that your approach is less secure or privacy-focused.

My point is, if you can't be bothered to create an extra email address for this purpose, then you probably aren't that concerned about it.

But I'm subject to being wrong.

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