FastMail owns fastmail.COM?!

[Bahb]

Originally Posted by ulmus

I think that FM team should just add *@fastmail.com to every user who has accounts and aliases in *@fastmail.fm )))))
That's it, simply replace 'fm' domain with 'com' domain (leaving of course 'fm' too).
Isn't that good idea ))) ?

I second the motion, of course. I pay alot to have my own domain elsewhere for the many places that don't accept fastmail.fm as a "valid e-mail address". It doesn't LOOK valid, and as often as I have tried to sell friends and family on the fabulous SPAM protection at Fastmail, not a single one bit.....they don't want the hastle of explaining the .fm. The hastle has decreased over the years, I must add.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by Bahb

...many places that don't accept fastmail.fm as a "valid e-mail address"...

As I pointed out, there is no reason for you to use a ".fm" address. Just use a sent.com or other alias.

I would not want additional aliases added (or my existing aliases changed) automatically! As an example of the problem, any spammer who has a list of .fm addresses would now have an immediately obvious list of new .com addresses where they can send their junk.

Bill

[downthemall]

Originally Posted by n5bb

As I pointed out, there is no reason for you to use a ".fm" address. Just use a sent.com or other alias.

Do you *really* think it would be good to use those lame domains like sent.com, 150ml.com, fmguy.com, etc? Tell me you were kidding.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by downthemall

Do you *really* think it would be good to use those lame domains like sent.com, 150ml.com, fmguy.com, etc? Tell me you were kidding.

No, I was not kidding. I suggested "myfastmail.com" and "sent.com". I see nothing wrong with either of them. I also use "eml.cc" and "ml.st" since they are short. Any service I have used which required an email address works fine with these, and I find that most people ignore the email address when they are responding to your message. If you think about it, the name "yahoo" is not very professional, and "gmail" was just a name for Google Mail created for their experimental email service. I can't imagine that any branding consultants created those names!

Personally, I like having an email address which isn't a clone of other big account addresses (such as bill1258@popularservice). So I use my personally owned domain (with a short and easily remembered address) for personal messages, and use those other Fastmail domains for services where the address is not important. One advantage of using one of the more obscure Fastmail domains is that you can choose the exact short alias you want to use at that domain.

If you have a business or other organization, you should of course carefully plan a domain name and purchase it, since it provides branding for your organization.

Bill

[me0000]

Originally Posted by Bahb

... I have tried to sell friends and family on the fabulous SPAM protection at Fastmail ...

r u talking about some other fastmail?

[me0000]

Originally Posted by downthemall

Do you *really* think it would be good to use those lame domains like sent.com, 150ml.com, fmguy.com, etc? Tell me you were kidding.

they r definitely lame domains.

[B4its2L8]

I'd love to see some statistical chart showing a breakdown of how many of the 100+ domains are actually used by FM customers. And that includes how many aliases at those domains are in frequent use (as opposed to being just reserved, but not enabled).

I wonder how many customers would actually miss some of those domains if they were allowed to expire. (Just thinkin' that FM could save themselves a bit of $$ if they jettisoned a goodly number of the lesser used domains and bought a few better ones. Quality, not quantity. )

[Bahb]

Originally Posted by me0000

r u talking about some other fastmail?

You are relatively new to Fastmail so perhaps the spam learning function hasn't helped you yet. OR perhaps you have been here when we had a freak mishap that let loose a barrage of spam. But on the whole, over the 11 years I've had an account here at the same time I was shopping other places, many of which have come and gone, I've always had less spam here than anywhere. In fact, lately I often go weeks without any spam at all. I use the Custom setting, which I'm sure helps alot. I have accounts at two other places, both of which have been around for about 20 years, and they have other features that are good but Spam protection is no better than it was ten years ago. it's just not a priority for them like it is here.

[downthemall]

Originally Posted by Bahb

But on the whole, over the 11 years I've had an account here at the same time I was shopping other places, many of which have come and gone, I've always had less spam here than anywhere.

I must agree with your praise to Fastmail. Once I was receiving too much spam (already using custom database), Support told me that my Bayes database was probably corrupt and that I should delete it. After that, it took me some weeks or months to build a new Bayes database, and since that time the spam detector has been very good.

There's one more thing. Fastmail blocks a lot of servers, much more than Gmail does. While on Gmail I receive pharma/viagra spam, I almost never receive such spam on Fastmail (they just don't appear in Junk Mail). Perhaps Gmail thinks it's exagerated to blacklist spam servers, or Gmail has clients who demand to receive those emails because they buy viagra on those websites. Oh oh...

[n5bb]

With regards to spam:

• We receive spam sent by specific criminals and criminal rings who sell lists of email addresses to each other. If someone includes you in the CC list of an email, and anyone on that CC list forwards the message to several of their other friends, your email address can quickly get onto many different email systems (and email clients on PC's). If anyone in that set of accounts gets malware installed on their system (or a business gets hacked), your address will get into these spammer email lists.
• Since you can't control who sends you messages and copies your address in CC (rather than BCC), it's impossible to prevent this proliferation of your email address unless you only share that specific address with one other system (such as a specific bank), and they don't share this with their marketing partners or get hacked. So I make up custom subdomain addresses for each business account I deal with, and I can see when their system is compromised. I had one instance where I was the one who initially informed a business (who provided test services for domains and email) that their system was compromised. It was very clear that the spammer didn't make up that complex subdomain address which included the company name!
• A spammer who buys your Gmail address may use certain servers or spam content, while another spammer may buy your Fastmail address and use different servers and content.
  • So you can't determine which service has the best spam filtering based on how many spam messages you receive! This is due to differing spam formats and sending servers, and the the fact that different spam is being sent to your various addresses.
  • Let's say that you have a Gmail address which is on many spam lists. Three spammers each send you 10 emails a day. If the Gmail system blocks 90% of the spam, 3 messages will make it through to you.
  • But if only one spammer buys your Fastmail address and is testing their new system with compromised servers and newly purchased domains, they might send you 500 emails that day and 95% are blocked, leading to 25 spam messages in your account.
  • Because the active spammers change tactics all the time, you think that the Fastmail (or other system) spam system is broken, but actually the system is working fine and the spam load (and characteristics) is just changing.
  • Adding to the complexity of comparing spam filtering systems is the active learning of spam in most systems, and the modification in methods used by spammers. For example, I am now receiving many spam messages with attachments, and the size of these emails is 100K-150K (which never happened a few months ago). Other messages are smaller (10K-50K) but include text from old books in the HTML source or at the end of the message body (usually invisible to the reader) which confuses spam filtering systems. So they can send a few spammy words and thousands of non-spammy words and phrases.

Bill

[Terry]

Originally Posted by downthemall

Do you *really* think it would be good to use those lame domains like sent.com, 150ml.com, fmguy.com, etc? Tell me you were kidding.

What's wrong with cent@sent.com

[lane]

Originally Posted by n5bb

So you can't determine which service has the best spam filtering based on how many spam messages you receive! This is due to differing spam formats and sending servers, and the the fact that different spam is being sent to your various addresses.

This is true in the situation Bill is describing, using different addresses at different services. However, if you own your own domain, you can change the MX servers (the servers which receive mail sent to you) alternately to those of various providers at which you have an account. I have done this for my domain, partly to find the best host for my domain email and partly, I confess, just because I like to play. In this manner, you can redirect the spam fire hose for the same address(es) to different providers – directly, not via forwarding.

In my most recent tests, I have found the best spam filtering at Fastmail, followed by Google Apps (grandfathered free account), and lastly, PolarisMail.

1. Fastmail is probably best because I can fine-tune the settings, and in the case of one address, actually use much stricter settings than for other addresses. See this thread for how to do it. I get very little spam in the spam folder, and no false positives or negatives.
2. Google Apps (essentially Gmail) is very good, but not quite as good as Fastmail. I get about a dozen spams a day in the spam folder, and practically no false positives or negatives. It is little effort to scan the spam folder once a day to check for a false positive.
3. Polarismail adopts a deliberate policy of not deleting or refusing any spam, to completely eliminate the possibiliy of any false positives disappearing. As a result, I get about 150 spams a day to the one problem address, and a handful to others. Finding a false positive among the 150+ is not easy. Polarismail does use two spam buckets, Spam and HardSpam, to help with this, but I find practically all spam goes into HardSpam. You can whitelist a false positive, though, so that further email from that address will get to your inbox. I still find PolarisMail very usable with its spam treatment, but clearly it is less convenient than Fastmail.

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by me0000

they r definitely lame domains.

Agreed. FastMail's current selection of .COM domains for aliases is -- to put it nicely -- lame, as me0000 said. Their .NET domains are better. I'm not trying to be mean to FM, and I know they've tried... but the addition of FastMail.COM will be fantastic. So, so, so much better IMO.

[curvefan]

Originally Posted by ioneja

Agreed. FastMail's current selection of .COM domains for aliases is -- to put it nicely -- lame, as me0000 said. Their .NET domains are better. I'm not trying to be mean to FM, and I know they've tried... but the addition of FastMail.COM will be fantastic. So, so, so much better IMO.

I agree as well.

Lame is putting it, as ioneja wrote, nicely.

Please give us the opportunity to get the fastmail.com address to add to, or replace the existing fastmail.fm address that we currently have.

Perdy please.

With sugar on top......................

[FredOnline]

Honestly, all this creeping is embarrassing.

Get yourselves a domain and use Fastmail with it.