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Comment by chrisjsmith | Hacker News Reader

I think that it's a bit over the top. The "canary" gets in the way of what you are doing.

I operate on the opposite principle: there is nothing sensitive in my email account. When it arrives, it is actioned and disposed of (properly) immediately.

I am not sentimental and do not keep every email "just in case" as I do not remember 99.9% of telephone conversations I've had.

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When it arrives, it is actioned and disposed of (properly) immediately

What about "important" emails in your inbox that you have not yet had a chance to take action on? Can you be taking action on your email 24 hours a day?

Gets summarised and copied straight onto my task list which is a text file with relevant information within an hour usually (unless I'm out cold). If it takes less than 5 mins it's done there and then.

I use Vim Outliner for task management.

What if somebody triggers password recoveries on all important sites using your email address?

I use aliases (one shots) for most sign-ups so it's very unlikely to happen. Only 5-6 trusted people know my real address. Also allows me to find the source for all incoming crap email and bin it quickly so I don't have to dredge through it (just drop the alias).

Lol, I'm sorry but you called this guy's process over the top but the more you explain your process it sounds way more over the top.

Why? I have two scripts "new-alias" and "kill-alias" that do all the work that took about 5 minutes each to write.

I automate everything.

Can you share those scripts?

I'd be embarrased if I posted them (they are crap) however here is how they work...

My mail comes directly into a Debian box running postfix on the end of my ADSL line.

new-alias: Echoes the alias onto the end of /etc/aliases, then runs newaliases.

kill-alias: Use sed to remove the line that matches the alias and run newaliases.

Dead simple.

As I understood it the criticism wasn't of the process but that you had to stare at the canary email every single time you look at your inbox.

That is precisely it.

I do something similar. If I sign up at Slashdot, I'll use the email address slashdot-SECRETKEY@domain.com, and if I sign up at Gawker, I'll use gawker-SECRETKEY@domain.com. Those emails get forwarded to my real email account.

Nice thing about this system is that I can immediately tell where spammers got my email address and shut it off. Also, any email that comes in that doesn't contain a SECRETKEY gets ignored, so I don't have to worry about spammers sending to sales@domain.com and admin@domain.com.

That's interesting to me. What service do you use that lets you quickly generate new addresses? Or are you running your own server?

I also use a separate email alias for each company I deal with. I run my own Postfix servers (primary + backup), but I've now created a web UI with a view to making this usable by others. The URL is in my profile (not sure if posting it here would be considered spam). It's still early days, but seems to work fine for my own emails. If you'd like to use it I'll be happy to create a (free) account for you.

I am an archival nut: it costs me little and from time to time, provides some big savings.

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