Might sound obvious in hindsight, but _always_ create separate AWS accounts for your different projects.
Actually, is there a reasonable free gmail alternative for situations like this? I'd like to migrate. FastMail is worth paying for, but it's too expensive for one-off side projects. And while I don't trust gmail, I think I trust most services even less.
EDIT: My point was, if you use a single account, it's far less likely to get banned. I think my account was caught in some sort of automated purge, since I certainly wasn't abusing anything. Some proof: http://i.imgur.com/H5RRkyP.png I'm not sure which policy violation they're referring to, but all appeals failed. I lost all emails in that account, which thankfully wasn't very serious because the account was still young.
eropple and drbawb pointed out that you can use plus addresses with AWS, e.g. foo+aws1@gmail.com.
Alternatively if you want ultimate trust just run your own mailserver and set up as many aliases as you want! For $5/mo you can get a Linode box to do it, and I've yet to get an IP from them that is on an e-mail blacklist. They have great documentation[1], the most important thing is to just make sure your SMTP server requires authentication & refuses to relay for remote hosts. SPF/DKIM are necessary to get past modern spam filters, but frankly if you've ever setup a TLS cert you can probably manage to setup DKIM just fine.
For example, sometimes a service will let you sign up with this just fine, but later when you need to do something else (such as password reset) or a phone agent has to enter it... it chokes.
Not to mention after some time passes you may forget what the special bit was and have to fall back to searching your email. Being regimented about the naming system helps, but it's not foolproof.
I'm using this trick less and less nowadays and just entering my plain email to avoid these hassles... especially for things like real life accounts. For possibly shady characters and account email consolidation, still a great trick!
1. register domain at a registrar that supports email catch all (I use namecheap, not affiliated)
2. setup email catch all (https://imgur.com/a/PTlzv) with redirect to your "real" email
3. write email to foobar@example.org -> get's redirected to your "real" email
This has the big advantage that you can change your real email account (I switched away from GMail two years ago) quite easily, you can track who leaks your address and filter more easily. But be prepared to leave some people stunned, I registered at my electricity provider with electricity@example.org or at my hairdresser with hairdo@example.org
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-setup-postfix-catch-all-...
The nice thing about running my own email server is I configured it to use . and _ as well as +. me.xxxx@example.com and me_xxxx@example.com are pretty much guaranteed to work, and it ends up exactly the same as the +.
A password manager solves this problem
Anyway, this doesn't solve the other technical problems you may hit at some point using this trick.
I'm just giving people a heads up. It's a useful tool for certain things, but it can be overused.
http://penguindreams.org/blog/how-google-and-microsoft-made-...
I've considered moving to Vultr since they block SMTP/25 by default and individual customers have to get it enabled (which seems like it should reduce false positive spam classification as more e-mail providers).
Aside: It always frustrates me when I see a business with their own domain and then an @gmail.com or @aol.com address. What registrars don't offer basic email forwarding (often for free?) or cheap (~$10 email) service you can buy from them if you can't figure out Google for your Domain)?
I feel like there is a small, but profitable space here, I just can't figure out what to do to harness it.
I have numerous personal projects that are web sites/web apps and I use Zoho to get emails at all those domains.
I don't know if this is frowned upon by Zoho, but if you don't want to use their UI, you can set up your regular personal Gmail account to act as a POP3 client and just retrieves emails from Zoho that way. (now that I wrote it out, it makes me think it can't be frowned upon, simply because POP3 is even offered as a feature there)
Having catchalls at bullshit domains is great.
I was like 10th from the last. :)
Why do you think that? If anything, you have more activity you can be banned for...
And also, why you say it like gmail is the only email provider? You need separate _email_ accounts, not gmail. It can be some other service or your own domain. Google can be service provider behind your own domain, but you will control address space etc. Nobody will ban you out of your own email address (except domain registrar, but that's unlikely).
I was quite surprised that my gmail account was banned without doing anything remotely malicious. (Certainly not anything listed in https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/%2B/policy/content.html) I suppose it's my word against Google's, which isn't a happy position to be in, but to the best of my knowledge that's what happened.
Regarding other services, I was hoping to get some recommendations about which one everyone likes using. Gmail and FastMail seem to be the two HN favorites, but FastMail gets expensive quickly for side projects. You can host your own email, but people have shared some unpleasant experiences with that route. It's true that you can still use gmail without losing your address, but you'll still lose your emails if they decide to suspend you.
I never saw/heard of evidence of such behavior.
> but you'll still lose your emails if they decide to suspend you
Emails are easily backupable, you can download them locally and/or forward everything to the "backup" email. One more service to host email on your own domain is Yandex.Mail, it's free and pretty good.
I'm personally considering hushmail (Canadian) or some other paid email in the future, for maximum piece of mind, any double digit number seems reasonable enough annually. Some out of the way liberal first world country , no superpower (and superspy) aspirations, a small paid provider (that actually needs customers and word of mouth and not throwing their weight around, Google is notorious for deleting YT channels willy nilly for 'guidelines violation' and then restoring them after a shit storm) to ensure no 'smart' 'ML' algorithm bans you. Sounds just about right.
It probably should, but I somehow ended up with two Amazon accounts (retail, not AWS) with the same email address. Changing the password I use changes which account I log in to.
Presumably it's a bug, but it's certainly confusing.
Eventually I got out of that by changing the mail of whatever account I could log into, using gmails feature of ignoring everything between the first + and an @ in the address. But most annoying, now my aws login is something silly like me+awsConsole42@gmai1.com.
Maybe I could change that back, but I'm too scared to touch that.
FastMail will let you create multiple aliases, either at your own domain, or one of theirs, linked to your account.
This email hostage situation kind of sucks. Hopefully there's an alternative for scenarios like this.
Someone mentioned self-hosting upthread. I wonder how difficult that is.
Here's the closest thing to a list of reasons I could find: https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/%2B/policy/content.html
I didn't engage in illegal activities, malicious or deceptive practices, hate speech, harassment, distributing personal information, child exploitation, spam, ranking manipulation, distribution of sexually explicit material, violence, selling regulated goods and services, impersonation, account hijacking, or use multiple accounts to bypass the above policies. So I have no idea what I did -- Google won't say, and all attempts to get more info out of them failed.
So what if I use the same account, if there is a lock-out event I should be notified and there should be an actual customer service agent that can solve my problem taking care of the issue...