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Email Comments, Questions and Miscellaneous Share your opinion of the email service you're using. Post general email questions and discussions that don't fit elsewhere. |
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16 Mar 2023, 08:59 AM | #16 | |
Intergalactic Postmaster
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Irving, Texas
Posts: 8,929
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Quote:
Bill |
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16 Mar 2023, 10:15 AM | #17 | |
Essential Contributor
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Scotland
Posts: 490
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16 Mar 2023, 10:24 AM | #18 | |
Essential Contributor
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Scotland
Posts: 490
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Quote:
I have a naming convention in the many different addresses I use, so that eg addresses used for listserv-run mail lists look different from other sorts of mail lists, and they all look different from eg addresses for personal friends, banks, utility companies etc. I set up various filters that would eg not let an email that was being sent from one of my listserv addresses to anywhere other than a listserver. Once in a blue moon if I did want to send a personal mail to one or a handful of people outwith the listserv, I'd temporarily disable the rule, send the mail, and immediately re-enable it. |
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16 Mar 2023, 11:04 PM | #19 |
Moderator
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: British Columbia
Posts: 4,011
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Recently internic.ca changed their email hosting. They no longer have catch-all, but they do allow 50 aliases on a mailbox.
In many ways this is preferable to me. I can easily add or delete an alias, and I don't have to worry about getting mail where someone got the TLD wrong. |
16 Mar 2023, 11:30 PM | #20 |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: EU
Posts: 4,945
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Is internic.ca a self-contained email provider (like Gmail, Fastmail &c) or it's basically an ISP with email available only to its customers?
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17 Mar 2023, 12:56 AM | #21 |
Moderator
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: British Columbia
Posts: 4,011
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Internic.ca is a domain registrar in Canada.
They also provide hosting for webpages and/or email. |
28 Mar 2023, 05:08 AM | #22 |
Essential Contributor
Join Date: Jan 2017
Posts: 278
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I wouldn't create a domain catchall with the intent of using it. I have one to allow for addresses I may have given out years ago. It may also help with address typos.
I don't get any spam to my catchall, but it would be easily dealt with if I did and I can turn the catchall off at any time. |
28 Mar 2023, 05:26 AM | #23 |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,742
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I'm going to test out a catchall with a domain I use fairly regularly and see what happens.
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28 Mar 2023, 06:01 AM | #24 | |
Essential Contributor
Join Date: Jan 2017
Posts: 278
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28 Mar 2023, 03:25 PM | #25 | |
Member
Join Date: Sep 2022
Posts: 80
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You may get some e-mails that the previous owner of that domain had signed up for. |
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28 Mar 2023, 08:01 PM | #26 |
Master of the @
Join Date: Feb 2017
Location: USA
Posts: 1,742
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My test domain is unique and I created it, so no worries about old addresses other than ones I may have created in the past and abandoned. Frankly, I suspect it will attract very little spam, but I am curious to see how many random email addresses pop up and from whom. So far nada.
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29 Mar 2023, 03:15 AM | #27 | |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: EU
Posts: 4,945
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It's the same when you move house and at new address keep receiving snail mail for the previous occupier. |
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15 Jun 2023, 03:25 AM | #28 |
Junior Member
Join Date: May 2018
Posts: 13
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I have another strange use of catch-all. I have a mydomain.tld custom domain that I'm not using, so I just put a catch-all email forward on it.
Since late 2021 or so, I have regularly received notifications from Google/Gmail that some random abc12345@gmail.com account has decided to use an equally random recovery email xyz67890@mydomain.tld. The handles always look very spammy. At first I just ignored the notifications, however as these notifications accumulated, out of curiosity I decided to take over some of these Google accounts, since after all I own their recovery emails. It's not too difficult as none of these accounts is 2FA protected, none has a telephone # attached, however when an account is still logged-in on a phone, I have been unable to take it over as Google's recovery process insists on sending a prompt or sms to that phone as well. In any case I have been able to take over many of these spammy Google/Gmail accounts, and they are ...weird. Some are new, some are 3-4 year old. Some were created in East/South Asia, some in the US (based on chosen language, last login location when available, and browsing & Youtube history when available). A few were used to send out weird spammy emails (but not the kind of blatant spams that you usually get in Gmail Spam folder, rather emails containing incoherent sentences and words lumped together, sent to many other similarly spammy @gmail.com addresses). A few also have some equally weird Sheets/Docs/jpg files in Google Drive. Most however are nearly empty of any content. And I have not seen anything looking remotely like real, personal Gmail emails or content. Now the question is: why do the (presumed) spammers create these Google/Gmail accounts then "give them away" via the recovery emails ? What is the purpose of the weird emails they sometime send out using these accounts ? I have also never seen anyone trying to reclaim these accounts (presumably lost to them now that I control them), as I have had no notification of attempted recovery, no mail asking for return of the account (something I would not mind doing as I have no interest in owning these random Gmail accounts with random worthless handle), etc.. Prior to writing this (long) post, I tried to access again some of these accounts, and a few have been blocked by Google infamously strict access/recovery control ("suspicious login", "account disabled", etc..) which obviously I won't bother to recover. |
15 Jun 2023, 12:40 PM | #29 |
Intergalactic Postmaster
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Irving, Texas
Posts: 8,929
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I suggest that you check to see if there are other registered domains similar to yours but with a different TLD. for example, I own a custom .net domain, and that same name is owned by others at the .com, .org, and other top-level domains. I receive accidental emails all the time to unknown persons who must have an email account at a different TLD.
So it’s possible that the owner is accidentally using the incorrect TLD or that their domain name is otherwise similar to yours and they are just making a typo. If they are automating the process, the automation script might be accidentally targeting your domain in this manner. When people are doing actions on a large scale, a few mistakes don’t always get noticed by them. It’s also possible that one scammer is trying to take control of some junk Gmail accounts that another scammer set up, and is making a typo when entering the recovery domain. Bill |
16 Jun 2023, 06:56 AM | #30 |
Junior Member
Join Date: May 2018
Posts: 13
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Hi Bill
mydomain is my surname, a very common surname, on a gtld, that I got (by chance) more than 2 decades ago when there were only 5 accessible gtlds (com net org info biz). So yes it is theoretically quite possible that the whole thing was/is accidental... ... however I doubt this very much, as I think on the contrary it is quite deliberate, because - this is no one-off mistake, they have been using <whatever>@mydomain.tld as recovery emails for almost 2 years now, for over 30 or so Google accounts, so they must by now be aware that they have lost control of a few of those, and thus make correction to their script (if they use one) to correct the mistake. I just received the latest recovery email notification from Google no later than earlier this week. - the handles xyz67890 are never the same, each is always unique / used only once, very long, combining characters and digits, very spammy-looking. - quite a few of these Google accounts are newly created, with recovery email set (presumably for the 1st time) directly as xyz67890@mydomain.tld, so disproving the theory of someone taking over an existing account and resetting recovery email. I know these are newly created, because I could see the Welcome to Google email in their Inbox with the date & as well as the browing history. These people know that mydomain.tld has a catch-all (very easy to guess if they look up my DNS MX records), and I strongly believe they set their recovery emails (but never with the same handle twice) as @mydomain.tld deliberately, not accidentally. But for what purpose..? |