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Comment by mttjj | Hacker News Reader

Do you prefer not to use a catchall alias[1] to prevent someone from just sending mail to garbage12345@yourdomain or for some other reason? I also use unique addresses for every website account I have but with the catchall, I don’t need to spend the 20 seconds to create the alias. It’s just automatically there. I can’t think of any issues I’ve had by using the wildcard alias.

[1]: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000277942-Ca...

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Can you disable an alias (i.e. drop all incoming mail to a particular address)?

Yes. Everything "just works" and it's quite easy to add block rules in the Fastmail web interface.

You initially set up the wildcard alias: for any email to *@example.com, route it to me@example.com

Then you can add rules to drop emails to foo@example.com, bar@example.com, .... Those work independently from the wildcard.

i guess im very pedantic - i don't want to make a rule to delete a email. i want it to bounce and never see my inbox and have the sender see that it bounced.

Fastmail has first-class support for exactly what you want. Settings > Users & Aliases > + New Alias > "Show advanced preferences". There's a checkbox that says "Disable - Reject (bounce) all mail sent to this address (disable the alias) Disable a specific address when you have a wildcard (catch-all) alias."

thanks - i didn't realize i could make an alias after the fact and then disable. appreciate it!

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