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As others have mentioned, it makes it easy to switch between services or even host your own. But I originally did it for the cool factor.
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iCloud has been a game changer since allowing custom domains, also their ‘hide my email’ feature is great for certain websites/trials/newsletters etc. Great if you’re already in the iOS ecosystem.
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This.
Be careful with some domains (like gTLDs such as .email). Tons of services and forms don’t see it as a legitimate address and only want .com, .us etc.
Yes absolutely. It gives you a sense of ownership and nobody can shut you down.
You’re also more flexible as in you can email providers very easily by simply pointing your domain DNS to a new one. With an @gmail for example, you’re stuck with Gmail. If I’m @example.com and want to swap to Tutanota from Protonmail, I can just change my DNS settings to the new provider and people can still email the same domain.
It also lets you stand out and I think it makes me look more professional on resumes. If your provider is properly set up, then the spam issue is non-existent, so I also highly recommend not to self host your own email.
You need to be careful and pick a reputable TLD though. For example, .top domains are free which also means a ton of scammers and bad folk use it, so it easily gets flagged for spam. I pay $15/yr for my .dev TLD which is ran by Google so it’s reputable. Also they have a special requirement for .dev domains which require to be https and blocks http on the domain level, which I find to be a security advantage and absolutely agree with.
I also have a wildcard domain so I can come up with emails on the fly. If you still want to sign up with things anonymously and not have your domain stick you, then you can use a private email forwarder like AnonAddy.
I think Google domains got sold out, so your domain is now ran by Squarespace?
Nah I use https://gandi.net . Great provider, highly recommend. They also mask your info by default and are privacy first, and fight for privacy.
Yikes! Gandi is expensive! I use dreamhost with much more reasonable costs for .dev and other domains. Ouch.
.dev domains are $15/yr, what are you talking about expensive?
Huh. You’re right. But then there’s this @ $229/yr
Some domain names are competitive. Idk how the pricing works anyways
Great recommendation on AnonAddy. I know what I’ll be seeing up tonight.
Privacy Does Not Equal Anonymity.
Yes; having anonymity does confer some level of privacy, but it is not the only means of having privacy.
Now let’s peek at the advantages:
- You own the domain.
- You can host your own mail exchange (MX), configure it the way you want and host it anywhere that will permit you to send and receive emails. Point the DNS record(s) at whatever MX server(s), that allow it, that you want. Personally I use Tutanota for my inbox and SimpleLogin for my junk aliases…
- You have control over where your mail gets routed. By DNS records; you can do a lot of things and point your emails in directions that avoid restrictive networks or unwanted relays as well as securing that route too; ensuring that no one can quietly redirect your mail elsewhere. I use Njalla for my domain.
- You have control over who hosts your inbox. This allows you to swiftly change mailbox or hosting providers without losing your long used email addresses.
- You aren’t sharing a domain with many users; which usually means fewer issues with email deliverability due to spam and abuse. Once your domain gains a positive reputation as a small-time email provider; most email services Will accept sent emails even if junk filters do not. Your recipients have an easy way to whitelist your entire domain.
- Your email will receive less spam overall.
Some disadvantages may include:
- Your domain will be aggressively filtered as junk by most Aggressively Configured Junk Filters.
- Your emails may be occasionally rejected by certain email providers with aggressive anti-junk configurations and applications deciding who they will receive from at the MX level.
- Your emails may be easy to snoop on at the network level; as they will have an identifiable domain on the envelope and will be primarily routed to a specific host. This is problematic if you or your mailbox provider don’t force remote mail servers to use TLS encryption.
- Your domain may be abused or spoofed for spam if you do not configure your DNS and MX settings correctly. (Use DKIM so remote servers can tell if another server is spoofing your domain)
- You will be 100% responsible for all mail that is sent; or appears to be sent by your domain name. This includes all spam that spoofs your domain name; therefore you must USE DKIM to mitigate it.
- You must properly configure everything. If you misconfigure it; the remote servers will notice that and REJECT all of your emails that are sent out.
- You may need to maintain your own MX (mail server) and host that if you choose to do so. This comes with additional performance and administration burdens. Double them if you allow anyone else to use your domain as an email address; because you are now responsible for their conduct as well.
It’s really not nearly as hard as you make it out to be lol.
I set up custom domains for Tutanota and it just told me what to setup with my DNS settings and I’m simply done. It was like 4 things to add in my DNS settings and it’s really easy to setup through your domain provider website (I use gandi.net which I recommend). I don’t have to worry about any of that and it checks that it’s configured right so I know it’s all good. Also I’ve literally never had my email go to spam.
The domain provider also hosts this DNS stuff so there is no “burden” you have to worry about. You set it once and forget it.
These are intended to be pros and cons.
The wording is intentional; and the processes can in fact be hard if you are not well studied in doing these things.
It’s very clear from my wording that I have experience doing this. Your pros/cons are wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Simple as that.
No; it is clear that you are in fact wrong.
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Yes, it’s very useful.
I have my own domain, which I use with a service called AnonAddy. It allows me to generate unlimited unique emails on-the-go, which I can then toggle off if spam starts coming in.
I use a unique email for every single service I sign up to.
Now, you are able to do this without a custom domain, but then you are putting all your eggs in one basket, and if the domain(s) you used for signing up, suddenly aren’t being renewed, you will lose access.
Thats why I have my own domain for this. If AnonAddy goes out of business, I can just take my domain, and all my aliases, to another service, such as SimpleLogin for example.
Can I also send mail from that address if I need to? I have a similar set-up with an catch all on Google workspace but sometimes I also need to write a from that address. Eg to get support from that service I used the address for.
Yes, that is a core aspect of how these “aliasing services” work.
You are able to simply hit the “reply” button, in which ever email provider the emails are routed to, and whatever you write will be delivered exactly like that to the person who sent you an email. From their perspective everything will look exactly as if they were talking to a regular email address.
This is a feature of both AnonAddy and SimpleLogin.
Regarding catch-all, that is basically also how I configured my usage of AnonAddy. Usually you would go and create a new alias, before you want to receive incoming mails on that address. All emails to aliases that are not already created will be dropped. But they also offer a, to me at least, superior version, where aliases are automatically created once the first email arrives on it.
This way you basically have a catch-all address, but with the benefits of being able to respond as all “identities”, as well as toggle off individual ones if you start receiving spam. If you read below, avoiding spam is my ultimate goal with all of this. Your use-case may be different.
I have written a small add-on for Firefox, which will automatically generate a random
forename.surname@domain.comfor me, and create that alias in AnonAddy with the current URL as a note. But yesterday I was checking in to a hotel, and the reception asked for an email, so I just typedhotel-name@domain.com, which will clearly indicate to me that it was created for that hotel only. The downside to this is that it’s easier to spot that it is indeed an alias address, but I’m also well aware of how spammers just buy active email-addresses in bulk, without caring about where the leaks come from, so I’m not too scared that it will stick out too much. You shouldn’t do stuff likefacebook@domain.comorgithub@domain.comthough. That’s gonna stick out like a sore thumb.Interesting, thanks!
you can do that from Gmail if you add the address in the advanced settings
Yes, but it takes time. I just want to hit reply
I use a unique email for every single service I sign up to. I’m that paranoid too, but privacy and cyber security are a very important things!
If AnonAddy goes out of business, I can just take my domain, and all my aliases, to another service, such as SimpleLogin for example.
How can you do that? I have hundreds of aliases, but they are all with SimpleLogin domains, if they’ll ever go out of business (good thing that they are part of the Proton galaxy now!) I’ll loose all of my accounts.
Oh, I see, but that would defeat the anonymity since all the aliases would still point to me.
Yes, you are correct.
If you’re using your aliasing-service to “blend in the crowd”, just like how TOR works, you may not want to use a custom domain.
For me, the purpose of AnonAddy is first, and foremost, to help me combat spam. Any privacy improving aspects I see as purely bonuses.
I will use the shared domains from time to time though, if I consider the risks to be too high. This goes from posting an email in a public forum, to signing up for a particularly suspicious newsletter for one-time benefits.
As always, you should take your own threat model in mind.
I used to use firstname@lastname.com (The benefits of having a rare last name), but I found that the work behind managing the email server myself wasn’t worth it. I could probably have outsourced the hosting and spam filtering to Google or the likes, but then I might as well use my lastname@gmail.com address.
I have firstname.lastname at gmail and receive a lot of emails meant for people with a much more interesting life than me.
Just use an email provider like protonmail or Tutanota. I pay like $12/yr for Tutanota which includes 2 custom domains. It handles the spam filter and configuring my stuff correctly so my stuff never is considered junk. Also my emails is stored as e2ee and they take security very seriously. I’d never attempt to self host my own email server, there’s so much that can go wrong and it’s super complicated.
This was back in 2008, before any of those existed.
I had the same issue. I only did it to make my resume look more professional. As soon as I found a new job I stopped maintaining it
Have one. My email address is firsname@firstnamesurname.com. I work in tech so it really seems to generate the right impression on my resume.
I have a unique first name, but a common last name so I have the exact same pattern for my professional email address
It’s a great option, but it’s debatable whether or not it’s privacy improving. On one hand it’s your domain. You don’t need to worry about moving email services, and as you control it, you can have as many addresses as you want. One for each service, catch all, and so on. On the other hand it’s YOUR domain. Only you have access to it. It’s quite easy to filter out the first part, before the @ sign, and identify exactly who you are. It’s a unique data point, tied to you. It’s arguably as bad as handing out a phone number.
The bit about moving email services can help privacy indirectly at least… If a provider no longer meets your privacy needs you can move to another that does.
That’s much harder when you don’t have your own personal domain
I agree with the tradeoffs stated here, but I’d argue that any email address you hand out can serve as a unique data point, tied to you.
myusername@gmail.com for obvious reasons.
myusername+token@gmail.com — easy to filter out the plus and everything after, and it’s very likely more people use this format than uniqueusername@my-own-domain.com, making more likely that this filtering would actually be automatically applied.
What about email relays? Kdhrbrk@mozmail.com doesn’t seem like it could be tied to me, then firefox relay forwards the email to my actual email address.
Yeah, email relays are probably better. I wasn’t necessarily considering those in my comment. But there are tradeoffs there too; now all your incoming mail can be read by a 3rd party, and there’s one more server between you and your email that needs to be up and working for you to properly receive mail.
one for each service
This is very useful for identifying which services might have sold your email to third parties.
Another downside may be that once you’re using your domain for emails, you better make sure you don’t accidentally let it expire or mess up some configuration and start missing emails, which may be important, sent to you
I use Cloudflare email routes. I make one address for each service and all of them forward to a managed email address. It’s great that I can just turn them off when I don’t wish to receive mail anymore.
