from MadBits@europe.pub to privacy@lemmy.ml on 09 Sep 16:50
https://europe.pub/post/15782518
I’m seeing lots of people subscribing with their real email address to different newsletters or random websites that they might use once in a while.
For a couple of years I have run a proxy SMTP that I kept to forward emails to my real address, as a privacy measure.
People tend to use the “+” sign in order to identify if their address was sold, for example signing up with “michael.john+amazon@gmail.com”, now what most do not realize is the fact that when selling data to third parties, most companies parse their email lists and clear our those “+” sign. (Source: I have worked with companies that do that)
I found the relay from Mozilla to be massively useful in this case, so if anyone is interested, have a try with it:
As a side not: If you’re using firefox, it integrates nicely into your browser, right clicking on a field and selecting “Use relay mask” is enough to generate an instant address so you can easily rotate them for each service.
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same here and it always felt like this useless tidbit was intentionally fed to the public.
It is meant for you to more easily organize your incoming emails than “identifying” which company sold your data.
Im not interested in alias mail services because I do not want to be tied to a provider. I have my own domain that can change to another provider if I need it without issue.
I think it is kinda misleading that they advertise the phone number support so strongly on their website, but do not support it yet according to their own site:
<img alt="" src="https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/874b7bd9-4792-4314-8f73-f40e14a0c463.png">
If they would already support phone numbers, I would immediately sign up. But for just E-Mail: I can use my E-Mail providers (mailbox.org) option for that. Only benefit is the direct Browser integration.
It does provide the phone number mask, that’s what it means. Nonetheless, I am on the free tier to be honest.
Phone numbers are regional, for what its worth. So you may see it in one region, travel to another and it doesn’t show.
Mostly its been great. A few sites are blocking it as an alias now. In other words you can’t use it to create the email. I wonder how long it will last.
Yea I did encounter something similar, except that website was only accepting gmail addresses and yahoo if I’m not mistaken. I had been running with it for about 3 years now. Currently I am also trying unbox.at, as someone recommended it and seems quite nice, except that its so easy with relay because I just right click and fill a field. But I will create an addon for unbox.at.
Its been a mix of websites for me. It is clear that some are catching on to mozmail domain being a passthrough.
I have a few domains and can create as many emails as I want so that is my fall back.