Comment on WhatsApp is one step closer to adding email address verification

• b000urns@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Hmm🤔 I use Migadu and could probably set this up – is this actually a good idea?

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  • lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    A catch-all is not a good idea. But Migadu lets you do something called pattern rewrites which are aliases that can contain wildcards. So you can set up a pattern like shop-*@yourdomain.tld and use addresses like shop-amazon@, shop-etsy@ etc.

    It doesn’t have to be “shop” you can use anything you want and make up the pattern in any way you want (“ama.shop.zon@” or whatever you can think of).

    It’s better than plus addresses (“realaddress+amazon@”) because it doesn’t have to include your real address, and you can make a pattern that nobody can guess, but still retain the ability to use one address per site so you know who’s spamming you, and you can make them up on the fly.

    In fact I no longer use my “real” address for anything except logging into IMAP and SMTP, I use aliases or patterns for everything else.

    These addresses do have one downside similar to catch-all: if one of them starts getting spam you have to make an explicit deny rule for it. Some people contend that this is a messy approach and they’d rather make regular (non-wildcard) aliases and deny everything else. The downside with that however is that you can no longer make up addresses on the fly, you have to go to the Migadu admin to create the alias every time.

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    • b000urns@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Hmm 🤔 interesting, I appreciate the qualified suggestions

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  • Engywuck@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “It work for me” ©

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• db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Don’t you also get infinite spam?

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  • lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Spammers don’t bother scanning domains as much nowadays. They used to watch domain registration then spam addresses like admin@, contact@, office@ etc. but nowadays most people aren’t dumb enough to use those anymore. So spammers would rather buy a list of millions of addresses that someone else obtained by breaking into sites like Yahoo or LinkedIn, which are much more likely to get a hit.

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  • Engywuck@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Actually (and surprisingly), I don’t. Maybe it’s due to WHOIS privacy.

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• smeg@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If they’re all attached to the same personal domain then that’s just as personally identifiable though

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  • Engywuck@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not if whois privacy is in place.

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    • smeg@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      True, signing up for several accounts using the same personal domain will create a link between those accounts though (whereas if they’re all @simplelogin.com or similar then you’re hiding asking the crowd)

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      • Engywuck@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Maybe. However, as long as they don’t know my real name/identity I don’t really care. Fact is that is much easier for companies to just block known email alias services than unknown random domain. Some of them do this already. Neither method is perfect, obviously.

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