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Comment by giomasce | Hacker News Reader

Since I have my own domain, I receive all emails addressed at whatever@domain.com. Of course, different values of "whatever" end up in different directories, and should one of those display an insufficient SNR, it would go straight to /dev/null. This way the "proper" address, i.e., the one that goes to the actual inbox, is not easy to extract.

The hard part is social acceptance. This morning the Whirpool technician was very puzzled by me giving him whirpool@domain.tld as my email, although he accepted my explanations in the end. (I might use more opaque identifiers, but then I would forget about what is what, so for the moment I am trying to stick with this scheme, until it becomes too difficult)

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The social acceptance part is truly hard. I recently received a BS trademark cease & desist because i was using the company name in the e-mail address I provided them & was using to communicate with them.

Personally, i've just replaced the recipient_delimiter default value(+) with "." as that is basically impossible to strip out. Ex, firstname.COMPANY@example.net

I do get a lot of weird looks when handing the addresses out in person, but a quick explanation usually works. I just tell them, that if I start receiving spam from one one the addresses, I can just block it and be done with it. They sometimes counter with "but we won't spam you" and I acknowledge that with "but not everyone is so nice as you" or something like that.

ps: you can use multiple delimiters, so grouping is possible with firstname.bills.COMPANY@example.net

I use the "companyname" part of "companyname@mydomain.tld" to express (often very profane) editorial views about the company when their site won't let me sign-up with "companyname@mydomain.tdl". I'm sure nobody ever sees it, but it makes me feel better.

I have the same setup, with not very many different directories (most just comes to my inbox), since my email load is pretty manageable. I find the most spam by far comes from an address checked in to a public git repo, with my actual (public) github email a distant second and everything else pretty much nil.

The only non-public email so far that has resulted in a lot of spam was the one I gave to the animal shelter when I adopted my cat. (I count unsolicited advertisements as spam.)

I also have my own domain and use a similar setup, with some grouping, such as:

home@domain.tld is for anyone and anything dealing with my physical home. Delivery of an appliance, repairs, homeowner's insurance and such. I expect the email volume here to be low except when ordering something.

fly@domain.tld is for any flight reservations. That's pretty convenient, I can find any old tickets or travel details by filtering for this address, and I also know any incoming mail is likely an ad, unless I just bought tickets.

hotel@domain.tld is for all hotel reservations, and is even more convenient. Unlike flights, I never need any emails from hotels except to see that my stay has been confirmed.

And on the rare occasions I expect to need a throwaway email, I'll use somethingrandom@domain.tld and point it to /dev/null after receiving what I needed.

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