Domain for multiple emails and forwarding?

[superFoolish]

I use catchall addresses (i.e. anything@mydomain.com) for signing-up for online services, or for giving out to people who aren't friends. The general idea is (something like):

facebook@mydomain.com
lemonfool@mydomain.com
logitech@mydomain.com
airconcompany@mydomain.com

Incidentally, I generally use variations of the above, so I might actually use bookface@mydomain.com, and I certainly wouldn't use paypal@mydomain.com.

The advantage of doing this, is that I don't have to do any preparation, and I have unlimited email addresses; if I want to try out an online service, I just sign in with a spontaneously-invented email address such as newthing@mydomain.com, and it just works. I've been doing this for at least a decade, and I've never experienced any problems.

For the last six years, I have collected all my mail via gmail, which handles the spam, so all those spammy accounts@mydomain.com emails get trapped. I check my gmail spam every couple of weeks (it only takes a minute to visually scan the subjects), and I very occasionally see a false positive - maybe one every month or two. Just out of interest, I've just checked my gmail spam folder, and have done a count for the last week, and it's much less than I thought it would be:

Spam message per day = 8, 2, 2, 10, 8, 9, 2

It does make me wonder why I get spam emails to (e.g.) boxdrop@mydomain.com! I did actually use that to sign-in to a service, so was it a guess by the spammers, a breach of security by the service-provider, or something else?

My 'most popular' spam email address is the one that I created to sign-up to an Adobe online service, but that breach was well publicised.

Summary: I only have positive experiences of using a catchall mailbox, over a decade or so.

[ReformedCharacter]

For the last six years, I have collected all my mail via gmail, which handles the spam, so all those spammy accounts@mydomain.com emails get trapped.

That's interesting, I was under the impression that when gmail picks up mail from other accounts it doesn't run it through their spam filters, it seems that I was wrong.

RC

[superFoolish]

For the last six years, I have collected all my mail via gmail, which handles the spam, so all those spammy accounts@mydomain.com emails get trapped.

That's interesting, I was under the impression that when gmail picks up mail from other accounts it doesn't run it through their spam filters, it seems that I was wrong.

RC

I've just double-checked in case I was mistaken, and I have my gmail account picking up email via 1and1 POP3 from an account called *@mydomain.com

This definitely goes through the gmail spam filter; gmail history shows it picked up four emails 25 minutes ago, and they were all spam, so today's spam count is higher than it was when I posted my previous message!

Hope that helps someone.

[mc2fool]

Just out of interest, I've just checked my gmail spam folder, and have done a count for the last week, and it's much less than I thought it would be:

Spam message per day = 8, 2, 2, 10, 8, 9, 2

Well, I don't use the catchall, I use explicit forwarders instead, and I don't have a spam folder 'cos I don't run any spam filters, at all, and my count for the last week is:

Spam message per day = 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

[Infrasonic]

Just out of interest, I've just checked my gmail spam folder, and have done a count for the last week, and it's much less than I thought it would be:

Spam message per day = 8, 2, 2, 10, 8, 9, 2

Well, I don't use the catchall, I use explicit forwarders instead, and I don't have a spam folder 'cos I don't run any spam filters, at all, and my count for the last week is:

Spam message per day = 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

The downside to that MO is that if you are using your domain address for business purposes without a catchall or spam folder (that you check daily), then you could miss a potentially important email from someone who has misspelt your address or has guessed that you probably have an 'enquiries' or 'customer' @ domain address when you don't...

I nearly went the no catchall route but decided against it, and it proved correct when the above scenario happened a few times (especially in the early days when email was the 'new thing') with people/companies who went on to give me paid work...

[mc2fool]

Well, I don't use the catchall, I use explicit forwarders instead, and I don't have a spam folder 'cos I don't run any spam filters, at all, and my count for the last week is:

Spam message per day = 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

The downside to that MO is that if you are using your domain address for business purposes without a catchall or spam folder (that you check daily), then you could miss a potentially important email from someone who has misspelt your address or has guessed that you probably have an 'enquiries' or 'customer' @ domain address when you don't...

As I said, I don't have a spam folder 'cos I don't run any spam filters. The only reason for having a spam folder is to segregate emails that your spam filter has decided is spam. I don't run any spam filters, everything comes directly into my inbox, and so I don't need to check anything else.

I run several websites, a personal one and a few commercial/other, and all of the latter accept contact@, enquiries@, help@, info@, postmaster@ and a few others, and all of them also have contact forms on the websites.

As I said a few posts back, I used to run a catchall, and now I don't

[panolek]

Wishing to hide your data from data sellers and spammers seems very reasonable. Especially for me, it's very familiar as I've not used my real email for 4 years since I've developed email forwarding services like Apple Hide My Email but for all platforms because it's basically a web app. Since that time I've not using my real email anymore, but I'm using forwarding emails such as "abc1@domain.com", and "abc2@domain.com".

My service is ProxiedMail, but also SimpleLogin and Addy are in that business as well. You can use it already without any need for a domain.

But also if you want to own your data even more I suggest you buy your own domain and you will be able to generate endless emails on it that could be forwarded anywhere you want. Working with your domain gives you more freedom as you won't be attached to domains that are provided by default by this kind of service. ProxiedMail provides free domain attaching and up to 10 proxy emails for free. It supports catch-all as well.

Additionally, pay attention that it gives you freedom of choice for your actual email provider as you can move from GMail to Proton, Tutanota, etc just in a few seconds.

[formoverfunction]

I use a combination of Apple's service, which is less than a quid a month an gives me unlimited aliases, Trash-mail which is free but limited and Simple Login (now owned by Proton) that has a limit of 10 aliases.

I then mostly do the opposite, my legacy gmail account forwards to an alias on my Protonmail account. The same with Trash-mail and Simple login. I am behind Proton's VPN.

My working account is with Apple and I almost create an alias a day for the inevitable presentations I attend and then delete it at the end of the day, maybe not every day, but most days.

Obviously that's grown like that as there's often been a limit on the number of aliased you cold create and to avoid the bother on managing domains.

If I was going to start over, I might just go with 2, Apple's apparently unlimited aliases at the click of a button and ProtomMail combined with their free VPN service.

[panolek]

I use a combination of Apple's service, which is less than a quid a month an gives me unlimited aliases, Trash-mail which is free but limited and Simple Login (now owned by Proton) that has a limit of 10 aliases.

SimpleLogin is cool, but they have a conflict of interests because they owned by Proton. Let's say you want to move to Tutanota or Runbox, etc in the future, they simply could do something that make it harder. But if you own your domain it will be easier.

[formoverfunction]

The one I think is really cool, is the Apple service, for 79p a month, or something like that, you get 50gb of file backup, unlimited email aliases and Apple Relay. I do almost create a new alias every few days and it takes 30 seconds.

Then when I am finished attending the Zoom meeting, presentation or analyst briefing I kill it.

I have owned my own domains in the past, but any longer.

I found Simple Login in easy to use, but I now create aliases for Proton via the internal service. Strangely my Tutanota accounts receives forwards from Simple Login and Trash Mail.

It may sound complicated, but it works for me. It means it's very difficult to see my overall activity. Important for me as I was targeted a few years ago, and an attempt was made to clone my id and raise capital of a significant sum. I was working in PE at the time. Doing exactly that.

I segregate all my accounts/email to make it difficult to see my overall activity.

[Infrasonic]

...
It may sound complicated, but it works for me. It means it's very difficult to see my overall activity. Important for me as I was targeted a few years ago, and an attempt was made to clone my id and raise capital of a significant sum. I was working in PE at the time. Doing exactly that.

I segregate all my accounts/email to make it difficult to see my overall activity.

The problem you may face going forwards is that trying to stay anonymous with no email sending reputation (analagous to an experian/equifax credit rating) is that increasingly the big email providers (outlook.com/Gmail/Yahoo) are requiring more and more account authentication - SPF/DKIM records in place, DMARC policies of quarantine/reject rather than none, PTR (reverse DNS) records being accurate et al. All the anonymising services like PM, Tuta(nota) etc have had issues with SMTP IP listings in the past (as have VPN's) as spammers/fraudsters will use them to hide behind.

If the end you are sending to use an email service that silently drops suspected spam/fraudulent email (no NDR sent out) then they and you could potentially be none the wiser about it. It happened to me a few years back, a company were emailing me invoices that were being silently dropped by Microsoft - one of the worst offenders for this. It was several months before it got resolved. Tuta have blogged about this issue effecting them in December '23 and it only got resolved when they went public with it in the tech press at which point MS removed them from their blocklists...

[Infrasonic]

A truly anonymous E2EE solution that doesn't require phone numbers and uses the whisper system designed by Signal...https://getsession.org/

[formoverfunction]

That sort of the works on the basis that I send email out, I very rarely do.

And the idea of ever going back to outlook.com/Gmail/Yahoo doesn't really appeal to me, as I mention I have Apple to fall back on. Frankly the idea of outlook.com/Gmail/Yahoo makes me shudder.

I can hardly see my provides not wanting to send email to me, as it happens I very rarely feel the need to email them, and for the most part I would expect them to have a secure messaging service. If they expect me to contact them with possibly sensitive information via unencrypted email them I wouldn't be a client for long.

For those that I do conduct business with, and we need a secure place, then we use a VDR, Virtual Data Room, and if not secure file sharing. The idea of sending confidential data any other way is unappealing.

Seriously, I can't see what people want to send by email, I expect secure on site messaging and a secure drop site.

For me email is a one direction only activity that should only ever contain public information (or a notification that I have a message). Hence I don't feel the need for my own domain. I would actually say it's the problematic smaller brother of secure solutions.

I have never experience dropped messages or an problem registering an Apple alias with any one. If someone wanted my business and objected to Proton or Tuta, they just wouldn't get it. Simple as that.

If you mean I might find it difficult to sign up for netflix or amazon, then it seems to me an Apple alias is a much better solution than having your own domain.

I can only say I see it as a positive if Facebook, X or LinkedIn in take objection to a Proton or Tuta email address.

I think I'll stick with my unlimited Apple alias over most other solutions for transactional/one time activities. Proton and Tuta when I want a level of privacy and other secure solutions when I want to share information.