Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisjsmith | Hacker News Reader

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).

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com