I want to use my main mail address everywhere, even public places. But I doubt if I can guard myself against spam.

Is there a provider specialized in spam protection? Or at least good at it?

At last, given your experience, should I even do it?

  • ccunning@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Isn’t it pretty widely known that many email providers support this?

    I just assume spammers would know enough to remove everything from the ‘+’ until the ‘@‘. It’s not like they’re trying to be sparing with recipients. Why not just send to both?

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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      8 months ago

      Isn’t it pretty widely known that many email providers support this?

      Personally I’m not a fan of “plus aliasing” because it gives away your base address, and it’s trivial for spammers to strip the alias. I prefer aliases that completely hide the base address.

      • AtmaJnana@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Its also VERY poorly and haphazardly handled in websites. Often they won’t let me create an account with it. Or I will be able to create an account using the alias, but then I am left unable to login.

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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          8 months ago

          That’s why we need formal rules. Once regulations are in place (with big penalties) websites magically start to function properly.

    • kevincox@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Yes. It is pretty easy to work around, but if that is the only tool you have it still can be used to junk a majority of the crap.

      If you want a robust solution you can use disposable aliases (which are basically randomly generated) or signed addresses.

      I do the latter. So I would generate an email like lemmy-example-59273625@kevincox.ca. If you strip or change the string at the end (which is a small HMAC) your message will go straight to junk. It isn’t perfect because there is only 4 bytes of entropy in the signature but a dedicated attacker will find a better way to spam me anyways.