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Comment by dcminter | Hacker News Reader

If you do this you immediately get thousands of emails a day from bots trying common first names etc.

Much better to maintain an explicit list of names you're currently allowing.

I do this and have done for over a decade (and used to from about 1998 to 2006 when I ran my own mail server), and don't receive any emails like this

It was probably some time in the early 2000s that I tried it. I'm actually pretty surprised others didn't/don't have the same issue.

Going back on topic, Apple offers mail hosting for custom domain, along with the optional “one mailbox, infinite aliases” feature we’re discussing right now. I’ve been using it for a while now and no bot spam. No spam at all actually.

> along with the optional “one mailbox, infinite aliases” feature we’re discussing right now.

They’re not exactly the same thing. Aliases are alternate addresses (under one domain) you set up yourself, while a catch-all just accepts any address in the domain as valid. While iCloud Mail does allow catch-all¹, aliases are capped at a maximum of three².

¹ https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/icloud/mm9e3ee0680f/ic...

² https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/icloud/mm074af79454/ic...

Ha, I didn’t realize “catch-all” was a technical term of art. Thanks for clarifying!

Surprisingly not. I have catch-all emails on several of my domains, and rarely get common name spam. I've blacklisted less than a dozen names on my domains in over 20 years.

A friend of mine does the same. Catch-all, and buying expired domains he thinks funny or related to projects and customers he previously worked with. On multiple occasions he has received emails that truly where never meant for him, not spam but actual emails.

So far I think he's returned at least two domains to their previous owners, because letting them laps was a mistake.

I guess it varies then. When I did it (probably 15 or 20 years ago mind) I unleashed a torrent of spam so voluminous that I had to write scripts to clean it up my inbox after I turned it off again.

It never happened to me - I use a catch all and almost never got emails like this. Why would bots try to guess emails on random domains when there are billions of known emails to send spam to.

This past weekend, I finally have purchased my own domain and was contemplating using it for email.

I had thought about a catch all, but was worried about bots. What is the best option?

Do you create addresses such as:

    eyeball@customdomain.com (for the eye doctor)
    tooth@customdomain.com (for the dentist)
    bank@customdomain.com 
    realfirstname@
    reddit@
    ...
    ...

I would like the ability that if I am in a situation that someone says "give me your email for..." and I would like the ability to just hand them something that is disposable. Would I just stand up say 10 addresses like:

random1, random2, random3... then delete them at some point in the future?

I really like Cloud's Hide My Email, but have been looking for alternatives since I am not sure where Apple is heading post Tim Cook.

For things I know ahead of time I'm going to need to give someone an email for (e.g. the dentist), I'll pre-make that address and have it ready for when they ask for it. For one-offs / unprepared asks for my email I usually just give them my 'main' initials@personaldomain.com e-mail just for the simplicity... Fastmail does let you use *@personaldomain.com to forward to your main address, but for the rare circumstance in which you need to reply to one of those emails, you do need to configure it in the settings.

Fastmail is probably the best $60/year I spend

Thanks. I really don't use email that often; I might get 20 emails a month, and those are just notifications versus actual actionable communications that require a response.

I have been looking at Fastmail, along with Purelymail ($10/year), which seems to have similar features.

I use Migadu to host my email, and they have a really cool wildcard-style system where I can basically define a regex string, and any email address matching that string goes to my main email. In my case, I use a specific set of numbers just before the @ as the matching string (let’s say, “45”), so email to firstname45@domain works, or doctor45@domain, or library45@domain all get delivered. Since the spammers don’t know this, I don’t get any spam. But I still have the benefit of being able to make up arbitrary emails on the spot for any purpose.

Outstanding. That's a super idea.

Migadu has been on my radar also, and at $19/yr it is worth giving it a try.

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