Americans are drowning in spam

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by inetknght on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:14AM (#31070891)

> going to start doing per-website emails from now on to track where the hell its coming from

Beware that some websites use this "legitimately":

I ordered some stuff from Ikea and asked that it get delivered. Ikea forwarded the request to a third party, TaskRabbit. I now get TaskRabbit email spam to my ikea.com@ per-website email. And no matter how many times I unsubscribe from TaskRabbit the spam still comes.

Spam detection successful! I just put @taskrabbit.com into the blackhole and call it a day. If I get more spam to ikea.com@ then it will also get blackholed. I already won't buy anything else from Ikea for something as dumb as this.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by cube00 on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:43AM (#31070430)

The first time I busted a company doing this was very satisfying writing to their privacy officer requesting they remove every trace of my data from their systems with an attachment of the spam email with their domain on it so it there could no doubt where it leaked from. Hopefully it was worth the few cents they got selling my address.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by dylan604 on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:55AM (#31070612)

You were satisfied with with empty calories? That's what I would consider this with the information you provided. Did the company you sent this removal request a) respond, b) honor your request? If no, then what you did was essentially waste your time. If they did, why not add that information to your post?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by saimiam on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:14AM (#31070884)

Such a shortsighted view of the action taken!

A) if more people make a fuss about their email getting sold the way OP did, we can still salvage something out of the situation

B) results/outcomes are not the only reason people why should do things. After all, we lionize those Russians protesting the Ukraine invasion knowing nothing will come out of it at a personal level.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by dylan604 on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:23AM (#31071036)

I can see where you're coming from, but I disagree with shortsighted. Pessimistic maybe. I see this kind of messaging to a company doing shady things similar to clicking the unsubscribe link in emails. It's just confirming the message was read by a human, and validates the email address as a good target. Even if you send the cease email from a different address, you've just given them a new address to harvest.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by azemetre on Monday April 18, 2022 @11:04AM (#31071636)

This is bad IMO, why should individuals have to rectify something a company did? All it does is encourage bad behavior because I'm sure that the still comes out ahead if even 10% (being generous) did the above.

Society would be way better if we made a collective action to lobby our Congress to change the laws and make it illegal. Tech has been unregulated for far too long and there's too many bad actors taking advantage of this.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by axus on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:17AM (#31070932)

"Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $46,517, so non-compliance can be costly." I'm not sure how much of that can be collected by the recipient.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by dylan604 on Monday April 18, 2022 @02:08PM (#31074316)

In what alternate reality has this been a thing putting SPAMers out of biz?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by encryptluks2 on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:26AM (#31071079)

I did this after discovering it was Comcast and had them try to play dumb till this day and say that someone "guessed" the randomly generated email.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by ta988 on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:55AM (#31071490)

yeah they did that as well with my <name>_comcast@<mydomain>.com and say the same. Every email I have is registered like that (rule in postfif for a non + separator because spammers remove them) and I see leaks all the time. Last one was robinhood address for which I now receive some crypto scam on it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by wlesieutre on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:43AM (#31070429)

Any good email services that offer unlimited aliases on custom domains at a reasonable price, or are you running that yourself?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by drexlspivey on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:47AM (#31070482)

You can use a catchall, no need to set an alias for each address. Fastmail is very often recommended around here

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by wlesieutre on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:51AM (#31071436)

Does that not get you a bunch of extra spam that's been blasted at made up addresses?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by ta988 on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:56AM (#31071504)

I have my custom server for that. Yes it happens, the occasional mail on root@ etc but that's negligible compared to normal level of spam.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by ARandomerDude on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:18AM (#31070956)

Fastmail.com

(No affiliation beyond being a happy customer.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by sodality2 on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:52AM (#31070564)

Migadu mail is very cheap, been using them for almost a year now with zero interruption or issues. Unlimited custom domains, unlimited aliases, etc for $20/yr

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by thex10 on Monday April 18, 2022 @12:05PM (#31072557)

I had just started using this one, enjoying it so far!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by criddell on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:04AM (#31070739)

If you are in the Apple ecosystem, you can do custom domains for $1 / month using iCloud+.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by neogodless on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:57AM (#31071528)

Does this include catch-all / unlimited aliases?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by WorldMaker on Monday April 18, 2022 @02:42PM (#31074767)

If you are all-in on the Apple ecosystem you can get unlimited aliases with Apple's "Hide My Email" system.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by neogodless on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:55AM (#31070613)

https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/email/

$15/year (plus the cost of the domain)

Currently using the middle tier and have been very happy with it.

Note that codified aliases are limited, but you can create a catch-all account. I have not needed to codify aliases to send "as" one of those accounts.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by wishinghand on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:53AM (#31071461)

I've only used it once or twice, but Fastmail has something like this as part of their lowest paid tier.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by neogodless on Monday April 18, 2022 @11:36AM (#31072129)

https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/

Actually have to step up to $5/month (per user) to get custom domain names.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by AhtiK on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:48AM (#31070496)

you can just add +myalias to most email services and get it delivered automatically. E.g. [email protected] delivers to [email protected]

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by vladvasiliu on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:37AM (#31071231)

But this is a quite well-known technique, so if someone is at least a little smart along the way, they can easily strip the +github part.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by jjoonathan on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:47AM (#31071361)

Not just "can," they do strip the + part. Especially the sketchy ones. Or they barf. I tried this for a while and had a 30% success rate. It was dismal.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by ta988 on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:57AM (#31071522)

spammers strip the + and some websites refuse them. I switched to other symbols on my own server to go around that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by saimiam on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:17AM (#31070940)

PretzelBox.cc (my project) does this along with a blog, a file storage area, and hosting.

Final pricing is still TBD but if you join the beta list, we are handing out huge discounts which’ll bring your effective cost between $5-15/month for everything.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Americans are drowning in spam by prepend on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:42AM (#31070411)

I’ve been doing this for a few years and find that the per website emails aren’t so bad and it’s whenever I use my old “legacy” emails that I’ve had with gmail for ages that gets the spam directed to it.

[ Parent | on HN ]