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Old 25 Jan 2018, 11:26 AM   #1
Tsunami
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: in between the bright lights and the far unlit unknown
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Which email account to use for social media, forums, etc?

I was wondering what accounts you prefer to sign up with for social media (eg Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, ...), networking sites (eg CouchSurfing, MeetUp.com, Internations, ...), forums, ... ?


Most of those sites will send a lot of emails because of status updates, notifications of new posts, etc. and some of the networks have a dodgy reputation when it comes to privacy (eg going through your email contact list)


I was wondering if it were better to create an additional email account with a random service for any such registrations, in order to not have an overload of updates in my Gmail and Outlook.com accounts, and in order to protect the privacy of the email accounts I use for daily email traffic.

On the other hand, since I mainly use social media and other networking sites for artistic promotion and travel purposes, it is important that the accounts are connected to a secure and stable email account. You don't want your Facebook or Twitter account to be accessed by any random stranger posting stuff in your name, just because the email account you used for signing up was not secure enough. (I don't have a Yahoo account yet, but somewhat hesitant to create one for that purpose, after the reports of hacked accounts)


Do you guys prefer to connect your social network accounts to your regular email accounts and have everything coming in in one place? Or do you prefer to keep social media and similar networking sites into a separate place and thus create alternative email account(s) for signing up?



PS I know there are email services that provide an email address that will cease to exist after 24 hours, and which are often promoted as a neat way to sign up for forums, networks, etc.
The problem is that probably at some point your accounts with LinkedIn, Twitter etc may get deleted for lacking a valid contact address, or that you miss out on those updates that are indeed important.
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Old 25 Jan 2018, 03:11 PM   #2
FredOnline
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I have one of my domains that points to a Google Apps grandfathered (free legacy) account, and have set up an e-mail account specifically for this purpose.

Within that account, I do not use the main address (the bit before the @) but have set up aliases for each social media and forum site that I use.

Also, I have a script set up within that account that purges any flagged e-mails (that I previously flagged in a filter) after 90 days, which saves time.

Of course, when you also consider the security, features and reliability of Gmail, it is a good solution.
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Old 25 Jan 2018, 03:46 PM   #3
chrisretusn
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I have a couple of accounts I use only for forums. I have two other accounts I use for social media. If there is a setting to turn off notifications by email I also do that. The only account I have not figured out how to turn off email notifications is twitter.
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Old 26 Jan 2018, 06:47 AM   #4
TenFour
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Join Date: Feb 2017
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I have various email addresses, but they all funnel to one Gmail account where I read everything. Gmail is so good at filtering that I very rarely get any non-legit email, but you can get lots of spam. The legit social accounts, like Facebook and Twitter, let you limit the spam quite a bit, and I don't see much. I stay away from most other social media if I can't turn off most notifications via email.
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Old 26 Jan 2018, 09:01 PM   #5
chrisretusn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chrisretusn View Post
The only account I have not figured out how to turn off email notifications is twitter.
Figured it out. Can't do it from the Twitter App, have log in via a browser.
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Old 29 Jan 2018, 08:31 AM   #6
webecedarian
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I'm a firm believer in separate emails for EVERYTHING. Luckily, this forum has often been useful in helping me to look farther afield.
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Old 29 Jan 2018, 09:41 AM   #7
n5bb
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I use one main account (at Fastmail), but make use of email subdomain aliases and filing rules so that all messages from that sourcer go to a specified folder. So all LinkedIn messages are in one folder, all Facebook messages in a different folder, etc. So I can ignore those messages until I decide to occasionally look them over.

To use such a system it’s best if you can create a unique email address (subdomain or plus address) for each service or business you sign up for. Then if there is a data breach at that service you can see when spam messages are being sent to that special address you only used for that one service (and never to send messages). This has shown me clear evidence of data breaches at a bank (their marketing group, I think), a large store chain (who had a temporary marketing arrangement with Amazon), and what is now Solar Winds (which had some kind of data breach a few years ago).

Bill
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Old 9 Feb 2018, 04:22 AM   #8
Tsunami
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So it seems the majority of you guys use separate email accounts for social media, rather than using your regular email accounts to sign up to FB/Twitter... None of you trusts Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Instagram enough to let it mingle () with the regular email conversations?

The "problem" I am facing is which separate account to use for social media. A Gmail account was my initial thought but I already have a few, and I assume Gmail doesn't let a person create an unlimited (or even large) amount of different accounts.
I thought of maybe a Yahoo account (I got none as yet) but the stories about security of Yahoo and hacked accounts scare me off a little. You don't want anyone to get access to your social media accounts and post Facebook entries or tweets on your behalf (the hassle to prove you didn't post those yourself is large and by the time you repaired things the damage is already done).
I also got 1 account with Microsoft (opted for Outlook as domain as opposed to Hotmail)

I thought of maybe Mail.be/ContactOffice.com/MailFence but I'm not sure if emails received and sent are for my eyes only, as the email option is part of a large set of options focussed on sharing things (calendars, files, etc)

I do have one Gmail account I don't use that often, however it is in the email client of my tablet. In the past I received messages that my Google account was breaching the Terms of Service, and that I had to undertake immediate action to prevent the account from being deleted. Just signing in to the same account via webmail instead of using mail client resolved the problem, but it kept re-occuring. The Google helpdesk couldn't find any actual breach of the ToS and was clueless about why I kept getting those warnings. It has been over half a year that I've had any such warning now, but let's just say my confidence in that one particular account isn't very high.
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Old 9 Feb 2018, 06:44 AM   #9
TenFour
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The big social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been good about honoring your settings with regard to notification emails etc., IMHO. They do like to change up the settings periodically just to try to spam you, but there is usually a way to turn those off and they stay off. It's the smaller sites, the odd forums, the organizations you join, etc. For example, I am a member of a couple of professional organizations and inevitably some of the members will download the entire list of members and start spamming them, which puts you on more spam lists, and on and on. Google is quite good about blocking these if you start reporting them as spam. I really do think that Gmail's spam and other filters are so good that you can keep things quite clean with a minimal amount of work. I just try to unsubscribe or block things I don't want when they pop up, and if they don't stop I report them to Gmail and they are gone.
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Old 18 Feb 2018, 10:35 PM   #10
Tsunami
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
The big social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been good about honoring your settings with regard to notification emails etc., IMHO. They do like to change up the settings periodically just to try to spam you, but there is usually a way to turn those off and they stay off. It's the smaller sites, the odd forums, the organizations you join, etc. For example, I am a member of a couple of professional organizations and inevitably some of the members will download the entire list of members and start spamming them, which puts you on more spam lists, and on and on. Google is quite good about blocking these if you start reporting them as spam. I really do think that Gmail's spam and other filters are so good that you can keep things quite clean with a minimal amount of work. I just try to unsubscribe or block things I don't want when they pop up, and if they don't stop I report them to Gmail and they are gone.
So you would not create a separate email account for signing up to forums and social media?

I was thinking of maybe creating a Gmail account to sign up to forums and social media because, as you say, it's trustworthy and has good spam filters. But I don't know how many Gmail accounts are allowed per person.
I have a Gmail account that I thought would be suitable, but I'm not sure how much I can trust that account after numerous warnings of breach of ToS (even when Google Support said themselves that they found no actual breach, and the last time I got such warning was over half a year ago)

Yahoo could be an option, as long as the security issues are a thing of the past.



Not all networking sites are sparse in communication and messages. MeetUp.com, CouchSurfing, LinkedIn for example are all very respected platforms (= no dodgy service that operates them, widely used globally, they have good reputations) but the amount of messages I get from them is quite high. I don't really mind, but I can imagine not everyone would welcome a large amount of messages, even if it comes from a well trusted platform. Of course the more people you follow or network with, and the more discussion groups you join, the higher the amount of messages ; but sometimes you sign up to a group that you don't use often but still find valuable. That results in quite a lot of emails to go through.
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Old 19 Feb 2018, 12:15 AM   #11
TenFour
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With the trusted ones, like LinkedIn, I find that you can drastically reduce the number of notifications by tweaking the settings. My thinking is this. If I don't want email from a particular site I either unsubscribe or adjust the settings to not get email. If that doesn't work I consider it spam, report it to Gmail, and it is gone--I don't see it anymore. So, I don't get the point of using an address to collect this spam just so I never have to look at it. If I never look at it, what's the point of getting it sent to me? I have read that a large percentage of email traffic is unwanted by the recipients--maybe over 50%. It seems to me that good email citizens will assist in reducing that unwanted traffic by unsubscribing from things they don't want and reporting email from places that refuse to honor your preferences.
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