this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2022
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You can append to your existing e-mail address in various ways, and this could be pretty useful for seeing who leaked your e-mail address to spammers. For example, for your bank, give them the address myaddress+banking@gamil.com. Then, if spammers send to that address, you can quickly see where they got the e-mail address from!

I've tested it with Proton Mail, and it works in exactly the same way.

See https://lifehacker.com/your-gmail-account-has-unlimited-addresses-1849809691

#technology #email #antispam #privacy

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[–] i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, many companies incorrectly validate e-mail addresses. Sometimes you aren't allowed to register and sometimes you are able to register but then some things don't work.

[–] GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes I must say I've only had about two that would not register a plus address. Most others are just sending and then accepting a OTP response. Plus addresses are also working with my own domain e-mail.

[–] saba@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use aliases on my own domain. For example, for lemmy I might use lemmy@mydomain.com or for my bank i use mybanksname@mydomain.com. Everything goes to the same inbox. There have been a couple times with job applications where I've had to reply and then they find out I'm not really indeed@mydomain.com but I guess I could set that account up if I feel the need.

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

If you register your domain with njalla (which are also amazing for privacy and generally have great no bullshit dns management) you get a domain-wide mail forward with that, it's a simple setting you can just toggle. Included in the 15/year (depending on your TLD) domain registration

[–] smorks@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago

if you're self-hosting your own e-mail with postfix, you can do this as well: https://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#recipient_delimiter

[–] bugsmith@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I used to work for a product comparison company (think finance and insurance). We used to save the email address as typed for login and also with everything after the plus removed separately. For Gmail and certain other large providers, we also stripped out any dots e.g. a.j.uniquename@gmail.com became ajuniquename@gmail.com.

[–] GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Now you can tell us who you worked for, so we can be sure to avoid them...

[–] bugsmith@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

I'd rather not dox myself. They're not a huge company. I promise you that this is not something uncommon.

[–] WigglingWalrus@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] bugsmith@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

Sorry, I thought the rest was implied. Because the company also sold user data (and stated that in the T&C's). The industry is very aware of email aliases and so it is more valuable to have sanitized data.

[–] noodlejetski@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

that very much depends on your email provider. while it works in Gmail and ProtonMail, it doesn't on Tutanota. just double check before you start using it.

also some websites don't support the + sign in an email field, and others have apparently learned to ignore it and everything that comes after it. something like Anonaddy/Simple Login/Mozilla Relay would probably be more likely to work. they generate a unique, random e-mail address that you sign up with, and then forward the emails to your main inbox. but then again, some services don't accept emails from their default domains as valid/safe.

[–] Canard@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 years ago

E-mail providers could configure another character for subaddressing, broadly accepted in forms, but they stick to this plus sign sadly.

I think about trying to buy a domain name, and playing with catch-all and ignore rules to avoid spam while creating a custom subaddressing setup on a custom domain. Source: this Mastodon post https://chaos.social/@silmaril/108878671259313909

[–] kromonos@fapsi.be 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I wonder why so many people found this option just now, because Gmail supports it since the beginning.
I configured my own mail server the same way. This mail tags are a great option to organize the own inbox. Works amazing, when the server also supports sieve.

[–] GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well I can answer that because I just read about it today and thought it was quite interesting. So many still don't know about it hence the post.

[–] admin@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I didn't know about this until now.

[–] kromonos@fapsi.be 3 points 2 years ago

Sorry for you both. It wasn't meant personally, but more in general, because so many people don't know about that feature.
Ok, it's not advertised very much, either.

I use Mozilla Relay. Thaz way i can also instantly block all mail to the compromised address

[–] peter@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

I use cloudflare catchall emsil on one of my domains and have an espanso script which generates a unique email when I type :email