Poll: Is your PayPal email address also your primary email address? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Is your PayPal email address also your primary email address?

14 pointsgaelian24 comments

Where "Paypal email address" is the one you use when you login to PayPal and "primary email address" is the one you use the most, day-to-day or would otherwise be checking frequently.

If the above definition doesn't make sense to you, try answering this question instead: If email is sent to the address you use to login to PayPal, will you see it promptly (within say, a few days at least if not earlier)?

Just trying to get some data for a project I'm working on. Any assistance much appreciated.

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No, but that account forwards to my primary.

I keep it separate for security reasons.

What reasons would that be?

Phishing emails would be a good start. I have the same setup as well. It makes more sense to have it forwarded and labeled coming in rather than give away your real email. This way if someone sends you fake mail to your daily use email but its not labeled from one of the secondary accounts you use to actually run your personal stuff, you know it's balony.

I'm not sure what to put -- I use Google Apps's "catch-all" feature for my domain, so I have it as paypal@example.com (I also do this for most sites requiring registration, e.g., HN is hn@example.com). While it does end up at the same inbox in the same domain, it's not quite my primary email.

If it helps, for my purposes, I'd call you a 'yes'. :)

According to your definition, my "primary email address" varies from day to day. I would say that I have three primary addresses -- one for personal email, one for FreeBSD or other open source related email, and one for anything Tarsnap related. Which I'm using the most on any particular day depends on what I'm doing that day.

(And that's not counting the gmail address I use for anything Google-related; my university address, which I use mostly for university governance matters; my Tarsnap AWS account email address; the FreeBSD Security Officer address I use when I want to make sure people pay attention to the email I'm sending; etc.)

But if it helps: Most of those addresses are linked to my PayPal account.

I can see how this would make my question difficult for you to answer. Perhaps I should amend the explanation a little. It's always hard to try and account for people's individual interpretations when I do this kind of stuff. Maybe it's just best if I stick around and answer queries.

It's sounding to me like your question is really "if email is sent to the address you use to login to paypal, will you see it promptly?"

That's another possible way of putting it that's probably as good or better than what I came up with, thanks.

IMHO, it's better if it isn't as it helps you to very easily detect phishing.

In my case, the address I use to log into paypal is only used for my paypal account. Nobody has it on file (unless paypal gives it away to third parties which it sometimes seems to do).

So if mail from "paypal" arrives, a strong sign of it being a phising mail is if it sent to any but the specific paypal address.

I'm generally using special email addresses for all sites I'm having an account with (<sitename>@(gnegg|pilif).ch, depending on mood).

Yes. You gonna send me money? :-)

No. However, I was going to say I can pay you the princely sum of one shiny upvote for your participation, but it appears I can't even do that. Or if I can, it's not showing up. :-(

You'll have to settle for me thinking "Thank you, wlievens" really, really hard.

Nope. PayPal only allows one business account per entity, so while I accept PayPal payments at multiple websites, there's only one primary e-mail address. I use a generic address for PayPal which is not any of my normal mailboxes. I do check it about once a day just in case there's a payment dispute or chargeback I need to handle.

Yes, I use one email address on my domain for everything. I have no need for a more nuanced email setup.

I use an "instantly disposable address" — see http://goo.gl/Dmhyd — when the trust is second tier (of three who get an address).

I'm surprised this has so many yes votes. I thought that in tech circles people tend to give out different email addresses for each online service they use...

Well the question did say "If email is sent to the address you use to login to PayPal, will you see it promptly" I do have a paypal-only email address but it does get routed to my primary account. During waking hours I'll probably see an email sent there within the hour. So I guess that means "yes"

The poll question would have been clearer as a tristate

Yeah, sorry for the somewhat nebulous nature of the question. having direct access only to my own brain, it's now abundantly clear that it's quite easy to fall into the trap of assuming that everyone uses email accounts in a similar way to one's self and will classify them the same way too.

But you got it right based off cperciva's suggested addition, if you're in a situation where your PayPal email address forwards to an address that you do pay attention to or the like, then that would be a "yes".

Well - 10 years ago, that was a common behaviour around me. Today, at least in the bubble I sit in, it's barely the case.

No to question 1, yes to question 2. The email used isn't my primary address, but it feeds into the inbox of my primary address.

I feel it strange with so many YES votes. I thought at least 90% will vote for no, for security reasons. Looks not.

It's a separate email account on a domain I only use in connection with eBay/Paypal. I still see the messages IRT.

Yes. I try to maintain a consistent identity online, and using a single email for everything helps with this.

No I created a account called "pay.username@gmail.com" :)

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