this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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That's a use case for aliases, catching if any company or service gives out your email to be abused by advertisers and whatnot. I tried looking for stories but didn't find any, I wonder if you have any to share.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes. One from Palmetto State Armory (sold to Norton LifeLock) and also Outside Inc. (BikeReg, Trailforks) sold my info to many many companies.

Some others such as GoDaddy email me relentlessly from a dozen different emails and even switched to different domains (godaddy2.com, e.godaddy.com, etc) after I blocked them before domain expiry of domains I've already moved off their service. Fortunately I used an alias and eventually just disabled the address.

[–] Chais 8 points 1 month ago

Kickstarter has a massive spam problem in my experience and best I can tell it's not talked about.
I backed a single project, immediately deactivated any and all communication from KS, except for that project, but I keep getting mails from different domains, advertising various stupid crowdfunding projects.
I have 16 blocked mails in the last week alone.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Same, I think. Several years now with over 220 aliases and none sold/stolen that I've caught. That said, some may have ended up in the spam folder without me ever noticing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Spammers really don't care about my self-hosted mail server for whatever reason, no matter where I use it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I’ve noticed this too

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Really? For me rspamd blocks at least 15 spam emails a day, usually from China or Russia. An additional 2-3 go to the junk folder, and some still slip through the cracks especially if it's coming from a gmail address.

But it could be as simple as it being because my email is publicly available (github, my website, etc.) so scrapers are picking it up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

never in all those many many years. imo the main benefit is disabling mails from the corp u give it and only enable when needed, so i blocked thousands of unwanted mails.

and with addy.io all gets pgp encrypted, which is another major benefit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Strangely no. I wonder if it being a @proton address is enough to kill the spam service. Many legit websites won't accept an @proton either, idk.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I use SimpleLogin; and for the most part they don't show up like this most of the time.

That being said; I also don't deeply do investigation unless the emails being sent from the alias vary from that alias' purpose.

Typically as long as the emails remain from the same relative sender (From: field in header) and the subject matter of the emails do not materially differ from what I initially get on the alias; I don't really fiddle with them.

But since the alias typically is a fixed sender; I also have them configured to include the actual From: header in the alias From: fields. This allows me to quickly block with granularity from my inbox any stray emails that might wander onto an alias without making it necessary for me to kill the entire alias. (Assuming the alias is still in use and worthy of preserving)

But then again I don't have nearly the spam problem that most do. I have segmented inboxes for various needs; and my GMail catches most of my crap being the biggest inbox. Between SL and GMail spam filters alongside of additional inbox filters I have setup there; most of the spam I get is generally funneled to the correct place and spam is minimal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago