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Comment by ProllyInfamous | Hacker News Reader

Really surprised this [very well-written] article didn't suggest the fantastic technique of owning an entire domain (although author's own examples obviously include unique handles@ for each tested practice).

Then you can hand each recipient an absolutely unique email which isn't just ole "name.morewords@" period trick — block those which receive SPAM.

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OR: the even "easier" lifestyle of just not using email (like me). Obviously this is difficult for modern living, but that's what temp email is best for [i.e. circumventing ubiquitous `REQUIRED` email address fields].

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I've been doing that for two decades. Most of the spam comes directly to my primary gmail. Because I shared that with friends and family. And at least some of my friends and family shared their entire contact list with the wrong app at least once.

This article however is talking about publishing your email address on a public website. It matches my experience, that simple javascript concatenation stops 100% of spam. Not that I would or ever did trust my primary email address to that.

This is your configuration error (likely just using a simple catch-all)?

When configured correctly each family member can reach you at a custom handle@, even seeing this custom reply address in response emails from you.

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But yes, you're correct about the purpose of OP's article (website obfuscation). The topic-overlap is so close that it's still worth mentioning, IMHO.

Years ago, I considered your approach. Programmatically create a custom email address for each person I wanted to talk to.

Then I hit upon a simpler solution. Have one email address. Happily share publicly. And whitelist the sender's email addresses. Emails not in the whitelist go into a quarantine folder that I glance at once in a while.

It's almost equivalent in efficacy, but much simpler to implement.

I don't have a phone ringer anymore, but when I did whitelist-only is how I screened incoming calls. Your method for email sorting has the advantage of being reviewable (verse entirely blocking specific handles@) — and much easier to implement/maintain.

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