Benefit of aliases versus custom domain

[truemagic]

Ok I've been struggling to find reasons to stick to my custom domain but always back to the same argument, would I be comfortable to give out my random_words@example.com to a shopping/newsletters/spam sites as opposed to giving other_alias@proton.me or other_alias@skiff.com or other_alias@tuta.com to those unknowingly suspicious sites that you're going to signup for ?

For me I'm more comfortable of giving out aliases from email provider because it can never be traced back to my primary email address (me@proton.me). On the other hand it feels unsafe of giving out alias with my custom domain because I could be receiving spam on my catch-all if they've my domain regardless whether my primary address is me@mycustomdomain.com.

Assumptions: Let's not include forwarding service like Addy.io or simplelogin in the discussion, and let's say catch-all has to be enabled for my custom domain for convenience purpose. Based on these assumptions, are you comfortable of giving out your email address to, for example, StackSocial or Appsumo? Not accusing them for sending spam, but they do send out offers EVERY single day so it feels unsafe to give out email with my custom domain for these sites.

What's your opinion on this? Do you always use your custom domain for signing up every site or do you use the aliases by email provider?

[Avion]

I had to look up StackSocial and Appsumo to see what they did, I'd never heard of them.

For them or any equivalent I would probably use Duck, basically because it's easy to use and it just works.

For my website contact, I use a Protonmail '@pm.me' address because I want to keep it separate from my domains.

I have more than one 'custom domain', and have one of them for general use, for example, forums, online purchases, etc.

I use another domain for important personal stuff, for example, family, banking, etc.

[nosim]

a) 1 email for official stuff (bank, gov, taxes, …)
b) 1 email for close people (family, friends, …)
c) 1 email for PR (sport club, reading club, school, colleagues, …)
d) a bunch of addresses/aliasses not at a known forwarding service for varying degrees of obfuscation.

Own domain preferred on a+b, maybe c, definitely not d for which ideally a bunch of domains are provided for.

[TenFour]

I have a bunch of domains that I used to use as my main email addresses for various things, but I don't think they should be used for random alias addresses for non-important or dodgy sites. For those situations I now use Duck aliases, and I have only found one or two sites that don't accept them. For business purposes domain email is desirable, though if your business is basically you and you have a good email address using your own name or some version of it, I think it is equally good, maybe better. I have had various problems with people making spelling errors entering domain addresses, or for some reason getting rejected by their spam filters, while I never have that problem with a Gmail address. Even when I do get spam at my Gmail address I find that Gmail usually quarantines it into the spam folder, and then it is easy to block that address to make sure future emails go into the spam folder.

[truemagic]

Originally Posted by Avion

I had to look up StackSocial and Appsumo to see what they did, I'd never heard of them.

For them or any equivalent I would probably use Duck, basically because it's easy to use and it just works.

For my website contact, I use a Protonmail '@pm.me' address because I want to keep it separate from my domains.

I have more than one 'custom domain', and have one of them for general use, for example, forums, online purchases, etc.

I use another domain for important personal stuff, for example, family, banking, etc.

I too use DDG for newsletters only, because the problem with it is that I couldn't initiate a new email to somebody with the specific alias. And also the auto-generated alias is made up of random characters which doesn't look serious so even I used it to receive an invitation of a waiting list, (I guess) it is silently discarded as I've never heard back lol.

Originally Posted by nosim

a) 1 email for official stuff (bank, gov, taxes, …)
b) 1 email for close people (family, friends, …)
c) 1 email for PR (sport club, reading club, school, colleagues, …)
d) a bunch of addresses/aliasses not at a known forwarding service for varying degrees of obfuscation.

Own domain preferred on a+b, maybe c, definitely not d for which ideally a bunch of domains are provided for.

I should've added another pre-condition that *what-if* I don't want to keep another custom domain just for emails? Don't get me wrong, I've dozens of domains right now and I feel it's overwhelmed for a single purpose (not getting spam). Shouldn't there a better approach to this (multiple domains)?

Also, I'm not sure about others, but I tend to prefer the common email domains more than my own. Maybe it's just a feeling that my custom domain is not nice looking than the ones that has more people using it (eg. pm.me/skiff.com/tuta.io...you name it).

Originally Posted by TenFour

I have a bunch of domains that I used to use as my main email addresses for various things, but I don't think they should be used for random alias addresses for non-important or dodgy sites. For those situations I now use Duck aliases, and I have only found one or two sites that don't accept them. For business purposes domain email is desirable, though if your business is basically you and you have a good email address using your own name or some version of it, I think it is equally good, maybe better. I have had various problems with people making spelling errors entering domain addresses, or for some reason getting rejected by their spam filters, while I never have that problem with a Gmail address. Even when I do get spam at my Gmail address I find that Gmail usually quarantines it into the spam folder, and then it is easy to block that address to make sure future emails go into the spam folder.

I agreed that for businesses domain email must come first. It does not appeal to me if a business is using Gmail or ProtonMail as their main contact, it just looks not professional (personal opinion). For private use however, I don't find the greater advantages of using custom domain other than it has a safe feeling whereby if any provider goes down I can easily move my domain emails.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by truemagic

... *what-if* I don't want to keep another custom domain just for emails?

No need for more than one domain. You can use different subdomains.

[TenFour]

No need for more than one domain. You can use different subdomains.

With subdomains it is trivial for someone to tie it to you and your main domain, plus it is just more complicated to type in or enter. This is a guarantee your email address will be entered incorrectly by lots of people. I personally find sub domains clunky.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by TenFour

With subdomains it is trivial for someone to tie it to you and your main domain, plus it is just more complicated to type in or enter. This is a guarantee your email address will be entered incorrectly by lots of people. I personally find sub domains clunky.

It's almost always me typing the address (either in some contact form, user's profile form, or the "From" field in an outgoing mail, so even if it's a real person they usually end up either saving my address to their contact list from an a message they received, or their email service or client saves it automatically.
I use me@mydomain only with close friends and family. My students usually start be sending me email from a mailto link somewhere in the university's site to my work address, which is forwarded to my private account, and then I reply form me@subdomain.mydomain and eventually it continues from there.
My original plan was that whenever I start to get too much spam at some subdomain I can disable the related alias (in Fastmail) so I don't need any discard rules to do it, but actually in 20 years I never needed to do it. I have one subdomain blocked, but it's not really a subdmain I used for email (about 15 years ago I used me@slasdot.mydomain in my profile at Slashdot, and they posted it publicly as meNO@SPAMslashdot.mydomain, so after some years I started getting spam at various addresses like sales@spamslashdot.mydomain, info@spamslashdot.mydomain, admin@ etc., and after a few more years when that spam became boring I created the alias spamslashdot and blocked it).
I don't think spammers bother trying to figure out domain addresses from subdomain addresses. At least the evidence I have from my use of subdomains is that they don't do it. I guess they did learn to strip the part after the + in me+label@domain because some major providers popularized the use of this form, so having a mass of addresses of this form justifies the effort of cleaning them up for spammers. So whatever slightly differs from the mainstream is probably quite immune to spammers, because they're not interested in it.
Of course if someone believes she or he is being targeted personally then it's quite different. I don't think one can easily hide nowadays, except by trying hide in the crowd, that is trying to not be different from most people in all aspects of life.

[TenFour]

My original plan was that whenever I start to get too much spam at some subdomain I can disable the related alias (in Fastmail) so I don't need any discard rules to do it, but actually in 20 years I never needed to do it. I have one subdomain blocked, but it's not really a subdmain I used for email (about 15 years ago I used me@slasdot.mydomain in my profile at Slashdot, and they posted it publicly as meNO@SPAMslashdot.mydomain, so after some years I started getting spam at various addresses like sales@spamslashdot.mydomain, info@spamslashdot.mydomain, admin@ etc., and after a few more years when that spam became boring I created the alias spamslashdot and blocked it).

Just seems so much simpler to use a DDG alias for anything nonimportant and then be able to disable the alias if it starts attracting too much spam. Unfortunately, I think any email address, no matter how little used, has the potential to become a spam magnet. All it takes is one site to be compromised and your "real" address is out there, which is why spam filtering is one of my top criteria when choosing an email provider. I find too that I often don't want to disable an address for a particular site because I still want to get legitimate emails from them, so I have to change the address anyway. Easy to change it to another DDG address.

[CyberSmurf]

I cannot comment on what is better.

I was really happy with my Telus (ISP) mail accounts because I could easily create and delete aliases myself. In 2021 Telus changed to GMail. It is different from a free GMail account. I am still allowed 30 aliases, but I have to go through the Telus postmaster if I want to add or delete an alias. I haven't changed my aliases since the migration to GMail.

In 2023 Internic.ca changed their email hosting so that there are no more wild cards, but I am allowed 50 aliases per email account. I can add or delete aliases as I wish. I greatly prefer having aliases over the wildcard option.


I haven't experimented with it much, but I appear to be allowed 10 aliases with my GMX.com email account. This might be the best option for obfuscating addresses that spammers could send to because I can edit both sides of the @ when creating an alias.
My myname@gmx.ca alias is totally different from my real account@gmx.com account. If I were to use another alias on a website, it would take some effort to find my myname@gmx.ca alias.

[truemagic]

Originally Posted by CyberSmurf

I cannot comment on what is better.

I was really happy with my Telus (ISP) mail accounts because I could easily create and delete aliases myself. In 2021 Telus changed to GMail. It is different from a free GMail account. I am still allowed 30 aliases, but I have to go through the Telus postmaster if I want to add or delete an alias. I haven't changed my aliases since the migration to GMail.

In 2023 Internic.ca changed their email hosting so that there are no more wild cards, but I am allowed 50 aliases per email account. I can add or delete aliases as I wish. I greatly prefer having aliases over the wildcard option.


I haven't experimented with it much, but I appear to be allowed 10 aliases with my GMX.com email account. This might be the best option for obfuscating addresses that spammers could send to because I can edit both sides of the @ when creating an alias.
My myname@gmx.ca alias is totally different from my real account@gmx.com account. If I were to use another alias on a website, it would take some effort to find my myname@gmx.ca alias.

That's a nice offer from your ISP but what if you changed your ISP, your email account will be gone? Sounds alot tedious than having an account with third party provider eg. GMX is a nice and forgotten one for me (and I just tested, my GMX account was inactive and removed, unfortunately). Didn't know they offer 10 aliases for free 10 years ago

[TenFour]

That's a nice offer from your ISP but what if you changed your ISP, your email account will be gone? Sounds alot tedious than having an account with third party provider eg. GMX is a nice and forgotten one for me (and I just tested, my GMX account was inactive and removed, unfortunately). Didn't know they offer 10 aliases for free 10 years ago

That's one thing that worries me about aliases at a third party provider--if they go out of business or change their terms you will have a lot of email addresses to change, or possibly lose.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by TenFour

That's one thing that worries me about aliases at a third party provider--if they go out of business or change their terms you will have a lot of email addresses to change, or possibly lose.

And that's probably more likely than having one or a few aliases flooded by spammers, and much more hassle than having to apply some rules to block an alias now and then, if it gets too much spam.

[CyberSmurf]

Originally Posted by truemagic

That's a nice offer from your ISP but what if you changed your ISP, your email account will be gone? [...]

That's one of the issues; I did change my ISP. I have a different ISP, so I am paying Telus a fee to keep my mail accounts. But the big issue for me is that I cannot add or delete aliases on the fly anymore.

[jeffpan]

GMX.net
Has 50 aliases for their fun domains.
Such as fantasyMail.de