My Email Canary

Re:My Email Canary by chrisjsmith on Thursday June 09, 2011 @07:56AM (#2636794)

I think that it's a bit over the top. The "canary" gets in the way of what you are doing.

I operate on the opposite principle: there is nothing sensitive in my email account. When it arrives, it is actioned and disposed of (properly) immediately.

I am not sentimental and do not keep every email "just in case" as I do not remember 99.9% of telephone conversations I've had.

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Re:My Email Canary by brown9-2 on Thursday June 09, 2011 @07:57AM (#2636800)

When it arrives, it is actioned and disposed of (properly) immediately

What about "important" emails in your inbox that you have not yet had a chance to take action on? Can you be taking action on your email 24 hours a day?

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Re:My Email Canary by chrisjsmith on Thursday June 09, 2011 @08:32AM (#2636869)

Gets summarised and copied straight onto my task list which is a text file with relevant information within an hour usually (unless I'm out cold). If it takes less than 5 mins it's done there and then.

I use Vim Outliner for task management.

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Re:My Email Canary by Tichy on Thursday June 09, 2011 @08:19AM (#2636835)

What if somebody triggers password recoveries on all important sites using your email address?

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Re:My Email Canary by chrisjsmith on Thursday June 09, 2011 @08:35AM (#2636884)

I use aliases (one shots) for most sign-ups so it's very unlikely to happen. Only 5-6 trusted people know my real address. Also allows me to find the source for all incoming crap email and bin it quickly so I don't have to dredge through it (just drop the alias).

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Re:My Email Canary by guelo on Thursday June 09, 2011 @08:43AM (#2636906)

Lol, I'm sorry but you called this guy's process over the top but the more you explain your process it sounds way more over the top.

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Re:My Email Canary by akkartik on Thursday June 09, 2011 @01:05PM (#2637823)

As I understood it the criticism wasn't of the process but that you had to stare at the canary email every single time you look at your inbox.

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Re:My Email Canary by chrisjsmith on Thursday June 09, 2011 @01:55PM (#2638047)

That is precisely it.

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Re:My Email Canary by chrisjsmith on Thursday June 09, 2011 @09:10AM (#2636982)

Why? I have two scripts "new-alias" and "kill-alias" that do all the work that took about 5 minutes each to write.

I automate everything.

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Re:My Email Canary by pavel_lishin on Thursday June 09, 2011 @12:29PM (#2637709)

Can you share those scripts?

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Re:My Email Canary by chrisjsmith on Thursday June 09, 2011 @01:55PM (#2638044)

I'd be embarrased if I posted them (they are crap) however here is how they work...

My mail comes directly into a Debian box running postfix on the end of my ADSL line.

new-alias: Echoes the alias onto the end of /etc/aliases, then runs newaliases.

kill-alias: Use sed to remove the line that matches the alias and run newaliases.

Dead simple.

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Re:My Email Canary by jawns on Thursday June 09, 2011 @09:09AM (#2636980)

I do something similar. If I sign up at Slashdot, I'll use the email address [email protected], and if I sign up at Gawker, I'll use [email protected]. Those emails get forwarded to my real email account.

Nice thing about this system is that I can immediately tell where spammers got my email address and shut it off. Also, any email that comes in that doesn't contain a SECRETKEY gets ignored, so I don't have to worry about spammers sending to [email protected] and [email protected].

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Re:My Email Canary by dtalen on Thursday June 09, 2011 @01:10PM (#2637847)

That's interesting to me. What service do you use that lets you quickly generate new addresses? Or are you running your own server?

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Re:My Email Canary by fmx on Friday June 10, 2011 @05:43AM (#2640275)

I also use a separate email alias for each company I deal with. I run my own Postfix servers (primary + backup), but I've now created a web UI with a view to making this usable by others. The URL is in my profile (not sure if posting it here would be considered spam). It's still early days, but seems to work fine for my own emails. If you'd like to use it I'll be happy to create a (free) account for you.

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Re:My Email Canary by pnathan on Thursday June 09, 2011 @02:37PM (#2638231)

I am an archival nut: it costs me little and from time to time, provides some big savings.

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