Counterpoint: I lost a domain when a registrar went out of business, and another when a registrar bumped the price 10x and refused to give me authenticode unless I physically show up to their office. Sure, I cheapened out and used shady cheap registrars, and this all happened a while ago so things are probably more regulated now, but for comparison I never permanently lost access to hosted email. (Losing access temporarily is another thing, Google likes blocking me from my own account when travelling.)
For people reading this that are worried, .com and .net domains are price capped and while the price may rise, it's regulated directly by the ICANN. If you're paying more than that then either your registrar is not following ICANN regulations or you're buying a domain that is being resold by a third party.
One time I had several domains at a registrar that began to fall apart organizationally. They couldn't transfer my domains out with their automated tools and they weren't answering my emails. I filed a dispute with ICANN and had all my domains transferred out within a week.
So at least for .com and .net there's a responsive third party with procedures to work around failing registrars.
Same thing happened to me over 20 years ago back then it was common to get domain hosting email all from one provider. They hiked up the price to something extortionate and changed the owner details on the domain to themselves cost me a fair penny to get that back from then on I kept my domain email and hosting all separate and stuck with what are hopefully more reputable providers. And of course these days if it happened I'd go straight to legal action something that young me didn't think of.
Even if you don't do dealings with shady registrars or TLDs (.af was a fun TLD until the Taliban returned to power...), you can lose your domain. For instance, lots of British people lost their .eu domains when they were no longer EU citizens thanks to Brexit.
On the one hand, using national TLDs can be a problem if the area you live in is no longer considered part of your country (I imagine .ua owners may have that problem in the future with the way things are going). On the other hand, using TLDs like .com/.net/.ai/.io puts your domain under control of foreign law enforcement (US for .com/.net, UK for .ai/.io).
This is why you (1) keep a local backup and (2) never ever use shady registrars for anything important. Hopefully you have learned from this and you regularly backup your email from Google in case your account becomes inaccessible for whatever reason.
I lost mine when a TLD (.xyz) thought I was malicious. I've also just failed to renew a domain before. So you're relying on the registry operator for the TLD itself to not ban you, the registrar to successfully renew, and yourself and your bank to successfully lay the registrar.
In fact the entire reason I stay on free email from a company I don't like is because I think it minimizes the chance I lose access to my email. My conclusion is essentially the exact opposite of the article.
While I did lose access to a hosted email and other services, and only permanently lost access to a free domain name so far, also was close to losing access to regular paid domains on multiple occasions (once because of the used registrar, twice because of the place I live in and international politics, being disconnected from payment systems, though with registrars also contributing a little).
Mandatory reliance of services on other services (whether it is email, phone, or a more explicit identity provider) is generally unfortunate. I think it is best to not look for a perfectly reliable setup, as it is unachievable, but to keep in mind that they are not reliable, to have recovery plans and fallback options if possible, reduce dependence on online services, especially those depending on others. Though a personal domain name still seems more reliable to me than that of an email provider.
Cloudflare aren’t a bad registrar (imo) - they sell and renew domains at wholesale cost, forward emails, can do website landing pages with a Worker (etc). Understand the product in depth and would seem like a reasonably safe bet. (Not shilling for them, just personal experience).
Been doing this for years, and surprised he didn't seem to mention the other benefit: "infinity" email addresses. Oh, rando burger spot wants an email for some free fries? Great, hit me up at randoburgerspot@"mydomain".com .
I do this, too - but I've been running into more and more companies that block you from using their company name in the email address.
It also results in awkward conversations if you have to talk to staff. I had ordered some pet supplies online a while ago registered like this.
Then I go in store more recently and they ask "Do you have an account with us?", I give them that email when asked, which causes them to pause. We went around a few times of them asking what my email was, before getting a manager who thought I was doing something dodgy and decided to try looking up my account by phone number instead of email.
I don't even have to bother with creating a 'real' alias address. When I make an account I can punch in any random address @mydomain and it shows up in my primary inbox in a special folder. It's so much more convenient
Could also be useful if someone puts a typo in your email username when sending you an important email. You'll still get the email with a catch-all emails set up on your own domain. But you won't without this.
Perhaps you missed it or the author updated the article, but I think this does cover it:
>Oh, and I highly recommend providers that offer a "catch-all" feature. This way, you can have one main email address and unlimited <put something here>@yourdomain.com email addresses. It's useful to have it separated, like netflix@yourdomain.com, but still receive the emails inside the same inbox.
I've occasionally pondered some sort of phone app that that can dynamically create a random new forwarding email, and keep track of what purpose it was for and who you shared it with.
Over the past few weeks I've been systematically migrating every one of my accounts to a domain under my control.
During the process I've been marking them in a spreadsheet with their 2FA status (no 2FA, TOTP, security key, etc.) and adding their passwords to a password manager.
This is all in case I ever need to go through the migration process again for whatever reason, or if I lose/break a Yubikey, I will know what I'm signed up for, and will know where to enrol my new Yubikey(s).
It really is a massive hinge for many people that isn't even really considered, most people's entire digital lives would be uprooted if they lost access to their email for whatever reason.
Thankfully that doesn't really ever happen to most "normal" people to my knowledge, since most just use Gmail, but I know it can and has happened through account bans or such.
Two factor tokens that can't be backed-up create stupid make-work.
Wouldn't it be great if Yubico let you back-up and restore a Yubikey?
It's maddening that they haven't come up with a reasonable way to allow a purchaser to register multiple Yubikeys to enable freely restoring backups between them. (Think of if analogously to buying multiple padlocks keyed the same from the factory.)
I'd prefer to be able to just set the same DKEK on the devices myself. Failing that I'd settle for Yubico being the arbiter. It would make the devices substantially more useful and less scary in loss / destruction scenarios.
Step 1 : go with the one company that's known worldwide for abusive & permanent bans with no recourse.
This post is a bit too generic, but it's true that using your own domain for mailing is the best solution to avoid getting locked out. Although you need to pick a good registrar, too...
Anyone wanna share their email strategy? I'm thinking of going for the following but I'm still undecided:
1. 1 custom domain (<simple-word-or-two>.com): this will be used for friends, family and any online accounts that know me IRL.
Use Fastmail masked addresses with my custom domain where it makes sense like an online account for amazon.
2. 1 custom domain (<online-nickname>.xyz): this will be used for a blog, professional IRL interviews, correspondence, github.
Use Fastmail masked addresses with my custom domain where it makes sense.
3. Masked emails using fastmail.com: for online accounts that are ephemeral, random newsletter signups etc. Don't want to associate any of my custom domains or IRL identity. Don't care if these are portable.
My main goals are:
- Separate my online identity/alias used for my blog (2) from gov entities, banks etc (1).
- for more anonymity/privacy use the fastmail.com domain with masked addresses to blend in with others on this domain.
I'd love feedback and to read what you do if you want to share :)
Your strategy seems good to me. The primary reference that I use for this kind of stuff is Michael Bazzell's book "Extreme Privacy". It goes into some detail about his strategy for using custom domains to compartmentalize things. That's what I base my own strategy on.
The only thing that I would add is that I prefer to "salt" my single-purpose email addresses with a bunch of random characters to prevent enumeration attacks, since it would be trivial to figure out the email address that I use for different services by just guessing. If I used amazon@domain.net, I might also use uber@domain.net, etc. Adding a salt prevents this from happening.
I got banned by .xyz once. I did manage to get it cleared up, but being banned by the TLD itself is pretty unpleasant. It's hard to even figure out that's what happened. And then I had to "prove" I was no longer distributing malware, with a list of what things I'd done to clean up the site and prevent further malware distribution - which was difficult as I was never distributing malware to begin with. Just a static website for a wordle variant, no ads or other 3rd party content.
I've been doing this for years, though I don't really think of it as "having a backup" so much as "using an IMAP client". Works fine. It's really useful to be able to make up a new email address for every company who wants one; they each get their own folder. If I get any unexpected mail, it's obvious where it came from and easy to deal with, though in practice this rarely happens.
Downloading email via POP or IMAP? Ever since I started using email in the 90's. I never deviated from it. In the old days, even the free mail hosts gave you POP access.
The caveat is that if your account gets banned, the IMAP access will also be blocked. An email forward is more likely to remain active, is the point made in TFA.
Forwarding emails is problematic especially if your provider for the primary mx does not have great spam filtering and then you end up sending spam to your backup account.
It certainly does not get around the ...if your account gets banned maybe the forwards will still work... concept but in general something like https://github.com/joeyates/imap-backup to backup your email and then add them to a typical backup process with your other files works well.
What scenarios are you thinking about to lose the domain? To me, the most common would be forget the pay the bill, or your credit card on file expires.
A light Google search tells me that it is possible with several different providers to pay for up to 10 years in advance. Still, the exact same issues can happen at the 10 years and 1 day mark! How do large corporations handle this problem? Do they have a special contract where the domain register will always keep the domain registered, then bill the corporation directly? That seems like a business venture with juicy margins.
I have the opposite problem. I want to get rid of email at a legacy unattractive domain but it's still appearing here and there so I keep paying for it and preserve the setup for it.
Looks like a good intro for people who want partial self-hosting, which is better than leaving it with a megacorp (especially for non-professional email).
In before:
* running your own mail is too much of a burden
* I used to host my own mail but I couldn’t figure out DNS or used a bad IP or something and Microsoft/Gmail won’t accept my mail
* if “they” want to ban you they will just seize your domain or kick down your door and shoot your dog
* it’s good that they can ban you from your email because I don’t like spam
Edit: lol, I was not in fact “in before” the comment about domain seizures. Unbelievable.
I guess the real question here is: Who is more likely to ban you, Google and co or your domain registar?
For most people, who are not doing anything shady/controversial with their domain and are using a .com or .net domain (which are price regulated by ICANN), are not using a shady registrar and will always have the cash on hand to renew as needed, the answer will be Google and co.
Its a good idea to set up auto-renew on a credit card, so you can be sure it will go through and you won't forget to renew it.
I more or less disagree with two points this article makes.
You don't have to go with a major mail hosting service to prevent deliverability issues. Any one of the hundreds of thousands of small local hosting providers should do. I've been with two tiny, local, "boutique" hosters for over 20 years and never noticed any issues. I also have it on good authority that entirely self-hosted e-mail is not as tricky as some like to claim. Set up your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC properly, and obviously don't send any spam or be an open relay, and even Google and Microsoft should have no worries doing business with you. Heck, if abuse scores were that important, Google and Microsoft would be the first hosts anyone would ban.
Also, catch-all is a terrible idea. I used to do it in the mid-2000s. Think about your current spam levels and multiply it by a thousand when every spammer can try jack@, john@, joe@, etc., and everything is delivered. Add to that all the spammers that use something@your-domain as a fake sender, so you get all the non-delivery reports. Ugh.
I used to do this to track leaks and non-consensual passing on of my address (the old registering at Company X with company-x@). This worked a few times, but after a few years I noticed that the amount of breaches and leaks soon make it useless. At this point, according to HaveIBeenPwned, most of the addresses I ever used have been in 20+ leaks each. It just not worth the effort anymore.
Highly recommend mbsync/isync for backing up your email. Quite simple to set up for fastmail, gmail. Everyone recommends n+1 backups of everything else, why should your email be less deserving?
As a bonus, if you install notmuch you get quick offline searches and can "mine" your email with shell scripts (or easily share it with sam altman if you're into that kind of thing).
(Alternatively, if you prefer being GUI, just install Thunderbird – this can also download your full imap and give you local search. You don't even have to use Thunderbird for it to be useful as a backup; it's probably the easiest way to quickly become more independent from google randomly deciding your account should be locked, which does happen.)
I learned this lesson when switching away from the first ISP I had email through. Rather than switching to another transient ISP email, I registered a domain. I've been through a couple of email providers but my email address never needs to change again.
I am actually working on doing the opposite and getting rid of my custom domains. I’m not really doing anything with them except spending money to have them. Working on getting all my socials to basically match with a similar username and just go from there.
If I host my blog, assuming I actually start making posts, on GitHub with a custom domain, when I die then the domain will likely expire and the blog is no longer accessible. If I keep it with my GitHub .io url, it’ll be there for as long as the account is there.
There are online services where a bad actor can enter your email to automatically sign you up for hundreds, thousands of marketing emails. In the event that that happens, given that you have full control over the domain, you could just divert whatever <x>@yourdomain.com to a black hole. What will happen when email attacks become more advanced--to the point of signing up thousands of different <x'>@yourdomain.com? What strategy would one have then? You would most certainly have to part ways with that domain.
The author makes a good point, your email address is (arguably) more important than your home address. Perhaps there already are, but I hope for better safeguards against these kinds of attacks.
I already am in that situation. Like onions and Ogres, my email defense is in layers.
1. Specific known compromised TO addresses are sent to devnull.
2. Specific FROM senders are whitelisted.
3. Three or sometimes four heuristics engines evaluate. If any of them pass the mail, it goes to a separate new-senders inbox. I thus get maybe a dozen spam messages per week in that box - and five figures of messages rejected.
I used to tweak it a lot, now I just occasionally add another FROM address to the whitelist.
For every crucial service (banking, etc), generate a unique, cryptographically-strong email address, save it to your password manager, and have its mail forwarded to your common inbox. If only phone numbers were so easy to mask.
This happened to me! Can I go to these services and turn it off, like remove my name from these spam lists? Please point me to this.
About once a month I go and drop myself from the latest lists. There are many magazines and whatnot where you can sign someone up for 100+ mails a day. Only a very few of them send you a message you have to ack to start the flood. Most just start the firehose without checking.
I'd like to hear what other people do to address this.
How does Google paid email service work with catch all email addresses? Can you send with an arbitrary alias without setting up a separate identity? Will it automatically respond to the correct alias?
We are all so vulnerable and have no protections. This is where government should be stepping in, but they won't until it happens to enough important people. This is fundamental
I'm thinking about trying something similar to this on top of AWS SES. They make it fairly trivial to accept email and store it to S3. So email forwarding would be straight to S3 backup. But still would need a system to backup these emails to some local storage.
Not sure what's the best way to handle this, I had my gmail account since the early days and it's baked into so many important accounts. It definitely crosses my mind what it'd be really difficult if I were blocked out somehow.
Yeah the idea is good but spam scores would definitely crater your deliverability - and quickly. It's hard enough keeping spam scores within a reasonable threshold while sending subscriber approved marketing emails.
Creating aliases for the addresses you are actually using, e.g. a netflix@ signup is preferred over a general catch all, .. and all that spam senders can generate approach.
Personal email domains makes you very identifiable just by lookung at your domain.
Using aliasing services (e.g. Mozilla Relay, Addy.io, etc.) with their default address generation ensures your email address itself does not disclose your domains when the eventual data breach occurs.
Plus catch-all addresses makes you an easy target for spam by sending to any email address on that domain vs need to know specific email address on typical email services.
I’ve considered running an email server on my personal domain for some time, but the effort of changing my email hasn’t felt worth it to me, given how many services I’ve signed up for with my current email (a Gmail address). Is anyone aware of any strategies to make this easier? It’d be nice if I could set up forwarding so services would automatically use my new email, but I’m not sure if something like that exists.
Many email service providers give you the option to fetch all emails from a different service not just as a one-time thing, but ongoing. I'm not sure how that could be set up when running your own email server, but I bet there's a way. Even if there isn't, you can set up automatic forwarding in Gmail.
There's a chance forwarding is better than fetching. I once had a Gmail account stolen, and account recovery was locked for some reason, but email forwarding had been set up and I was still able to get all emails the address received.
In case it's relevant, I happen to use Fastmail now and their "mail fetch" feature involves imap.
You can have the Gmail emails be forwarded to your own email server, or have your server fetch them from Gmail, and then migrate bit by bit, the most important accounts first.
Before SPF and the like, it used to be trivial to also send email with a different From address (like your existing Gmail address) from your own server, but that’s not the case anymore.
That's fine for your own domain, but I usually download my emails via IMAP and don't leave anything on the remote server.
Finally, do you really keep your emails?
Emails are ephemeral, often just informative, and if there's anything important, I process it and delete the email.
I may archive 'sentimental' emails, but I rarely search the archive as I mainly delete emails.
I keep mail because there’s been things that only became important or useful long after the fact. You just never know.
They can also serve as a sort of snapshot of a certain point in time that’s very effective at jogging your memory. I’ve had occasions where old emails reminded me of things that happened that I’d nearly forgotten or conflated details about.
Do you mean "on the server?" I don't -- and just the opposite here; the cost of keeping literally all of them is close enough to zero, I never delete any emails and use "read/unread." I just archive yearly.
When I see suggestions to "own" your email domain, how do you manage the chicken-egg problem of needing an email address in the first place to register the domain you want to lease?
Are there registrars that let you walk in with a physical ID to proof you are you in case your email gets compromised and they get access to the registrar? Any experience with that?
> With this solution, there's a high chance that if they ban you by mistake (AI bots are to blame), they will not disable the forwarding mechanism.
Why bet on that instead of doing it the other way around (i.e. making the self-operated mail server the primary that forwards to the service provider inbox), or at least practicing doing so by pointing the MX records accordingly?
Afaik sending emails is much harder than receiving, because of several layers of anti-spam measurements, which don't apply for receiving (besides local spam filters).
I have my own domain trallnag.com for this purpose, but it's always a huge pain to spell the domain to someone in person or over the phone. The leaf being a made up word does not make things simpler. So for these cases I've started to fall back on gmail.com or outlook.com
Yeah kinda. Honestly when I signed up for it I had no idea it was a country TLD, let alone that it might disappear so easily one day. If it does go away I'll live, but it will be quite annoying to have to switch my entire digital life over to a new domain. I've had my domain for 10+ years so lots of stuff is pointed there.
Yes, but, there are things one can do to help alleviate or avoid being classified as spammer...such as setting up SPF, DKIM, DMARc, etc. properly. Also, have folks send emails into your new inbox first, then reply, etc...Also, "warm up" the sending outbound by sending into legitimate services little by little, etc. Now, if you were to stand up your own self-hosted mail server, that makes things a little harder, but even then, there are things one can do...so its not dire.
I am using my own Mail Server (mailcow) beside my old gmail and other adresses. But for convenient, searchable offline Backups, I use Mailsteward (macOS)
... if it is of interest for someone: https://mailsteward.com
Then I put the database on multiple backup locations regularly.
Another thing, some people do not already know: If you don't need a throwaway-adress for some services, and you just want to make your mailbox more structured, you can use '+' before the '@' to add another word to your email adress.
Like: your.name+randomName@gmail.com
The +randomName will be ignored and the emails are received at your.name@gmail.com. But most Servers (I use) will put a '[randomName]' before the subject of the received email. Which can be quite handy for handling your emails. Even more, if the company uses multiple different adresses to send you emails.
I've self hosted my email forwarding service on my own domain for over a decade, but eventually gave up because of deliverability issues that were out of my control - primarily with Microsoft's email services.
I've switched 3 years ago to a hosted forwarding service forwardemail.net
Pros:
* Allows to switch email providers if needed
* Allows to forward email to multiple providers
* Allows to store backups of emails
* Allows to have emails on multiple domains for different contexts (personal/professional/projects/etc.)
* Allows to have different email addresses per service. If you get spam on that email address you can just stop forwarding emails for it.
* Allows to have reliable mail rules based on the email address
* Allows also to send emails from multiple addressses
* Most spam is filtered before it reaches the inbox
* Open source
* Would be easy to switch to a different email forwarding service if needed (or self host it).
* Excellent track record over 8+ years
Cons:
* They have the potential to snoop on your emails. Any service that's really important would have 2FA enabled, so I accept the risk.
* They have the potential to send emails on your behalf - again, they've earned my trust, so I accept the risk for that.
* Add another point possible failure. So far I haven't noticed any issues with it.
* There's greylisting that delays emails for 5 minutes if they are not on the whitelist, which affects some of less common sending services.
* In very rare cases, some services ban registering with a forwarding email addresses.
* You need to make sure you don't lose your domain. I renew it 5 years before expiry with a reputable domain registrar (NameCheap).
What’s your plan after for after those 5 years and you can’t renew? Domain expires, someone registers it and now has access to all your accounts? Albeit maybe you won’t care because you won’t be around but I wonder how it’ll impact your family/friends
Another huge thing is that if you get banned from Google you (might) also lose "Sign in with <bigcorp>" - so you lose access to a lot more thing than just your email.
I never really understood why "owning" a domain is any more owning than you own your Gmail address: a company is letting you use it and that works until they don't. What an I missing?
The contractual requirements that ICANN imposes upon registrars. They can’t just take your domain for any old reason. The rules are fairly well defined and registrars can lose their accreditation if they do not follow them.
You probably won't get hacked and have your domain taken down for distributing malware. But you also probably won't be randomly banned by Google/Proton. Neither feels like "full, unbannable control of my email" to me. If anything, I'm more concerned about my little old domain getting hijacked than getting banned from a hosted email account.
You aren't missing much only that domains are a bit more portable between registrars and they've historically been a bit more resistant against random bannings.
I don’t think TFA is talking about hosting email for well-known piracy sites or terrorists. My guess is they are more concerned about arbitrary and capricious account bans for supposed TOS violations, which is more relevant to ordinary people. Your domain won’t be seized by someone because Google doesn’t like your YouTube upload or whatever.
pzmarzly|4 months ago
nodja|4 months ago
c22|4 months ago
So at least for .com and .net there's a responsive third party with procedures to work around failing registrars.
rwky|4 months ago
jeroenhd|4 months ago
On the one hand, using national TLDs can be a problem if the area you live in is no longer considered part of your country (I imagine .ua owners may have that problem in the future with the way things are going). On the other hand, using TLDs like .com/.net/.ai/.io puts your domain under control of foreign law enforcement (US for .com/.net, UK for .ai/.io).
iamnothere|4 months ago
furyofantares|4 months ago
In fact the entire reason I stay on free email from a company I don't like is because I think it minimizes the chance I lose access to my email. My conclusion is essentially the exact opposite of the article.
mobilemidget|4 months ago
was it a very distant location to head out to?
defanor|4 months ago
Mandatory reliance of services on other services (whether it is email, phone, or a more explicit identity provider) is generally unfortunate. I think it is best to not look for a perfectly reliable setup, as it is unachievable, but to keep in mind that they are not reliable, to have recovery plans and fallback options if possible, reduce dependence on online services, especially those depending on others. Though a personal domain name still seems more reliable to me than that of an email provider.
implements|4 months ago
opengrass|4 months ago
jrm4|4 months ago
paranoidrobot|4 months ago
It also results in awkward conversations if you have to talk to staff. I had ordered some pet supplies online a while ago registered like this.
Then I go in store more recently and they ask "Do you have an account with us?", I give them that email when asked, which causes them to pause. We went around a few times of them asking what my email was, before getting a manager who thought I was doing something dodgy and decided to try looking up my account by phone number instead of email.
imiric|4 months ago
robotresearcher|4 months ago
<yourname>+<arbitrary_str>@gmail.com
steve+randoburger@gmail.com
hungryhobbit|4 months ago
estimator7292|4 months ago
aussieguy1234|4 months ago
deadbabe|4 months ago
ronbenton|4 months ago
>Oh, and I highly recommend providers that offer a "catch-all" feature. This way, you can have one main email address and unlimited <put something here>@yourdomain.com email addresses. It's useful to have it separated, like netflix@yourdomain.com, but still receive the emails inside the same inbox.
sunnybeetroot|4 months ago
Terr_|4 months ago
jwkerr|4 months ago
During the process I've been marking them in a spreadsheet with their 2FA status (no 2FA, TOTP, security key, etc.) and adding their passwords to a password manager.
This is all in case I ever need to go through the migration process again for whatever reason, or if I lose/break a Yubikey, I will know what I'm signed up for, and will know where to enrol my new Yubikey(s).
It really is a massive hinge for many people that isn't even really considered, most people's entire digital lives would be uprooted if they lost access to their email for whatever reason.
Thankfully that doesn't really ever happen to most "normal" people to my knowledge, since most just use Gmail, but I know it can and has happened through account bans or such.
EvanAnderson|4 months ago
Wouldn't it be great if Yubico let you back-up and restore a Yubikey?
It's maddening that they haven't come up with a reasonable way to allow a purchaser to register multiple Yubikeys to enable freely restoring backups between them. (Think of if analogously to buying multiple padlocks keyed the same from the factory.)
I'd prefer to be able to just set the same DKEK on the devices myself. Failing that I'd settle for Yubico being the arbiter. It would make the devices substantially more useful and less scary in loss / destruction scenarios.
huflungdung|4 months ago
[deleted]
bxsioshc|4 months ago
[deleted]
manytimesaway|4 months ago
Step 1 : go with the one company that's known worldwide for abusive & permanent bans with no recourse.
This post is a bit too generic, but it's true that using your own domain for mailing is the best solution to avoid getting locked out. Although you need to pick a good registrar, too...
morshu9001|4 months ago
qyckudnefDi5|4 months ago
1. 1 custom domain (<simple-word-or-two>.com): this will be used for friends, family and any online accounts that know me IRL.
Use Fastmail masked addresses with my custom domain where it makes sense like an online account for amazon.
2. 1 custom domain (<online-nickname>.xyz): this will be used for a blog, professional IRL interviews, correspondence, github.
Use Fastmail masked addresses with my custom domain where it makes sense.
3. Masked emails using fastmail.com: for online accounts that are ephemeral, random newsletter signups etc. Don't want to associate any of my custom domains or IRL identity. Don't care if these are portable.
My main goals are:
- Separate my online identity/alias used for my blog (2) from gov entities, banks etc (1).
- for more anonymity/privacy use the fastmail.com domain with masked addresses to blend in with others on this domain.
I'd love feedback and to read what you do if you want to share :)
atrettel|4 months ago
The only thing that I would add is that I prefer to "salt" my single-purpose email addresses with a bunch of random characters to prevent enumeration attacks, since it would be trivial to figure out the email address that I use for different services by just guessing. If I used amazon@domain.net, I might also use uber@domain.net, etc. Adding a salt prevents this from happening.
furyofantares|4 months ago
I got banned by .xyz once. I did manage to get it cleared up, but being banned by the TLD itself is pretty unpleasant. It's hard to even figure out that's what happened. And then I had to "prove" I was no longer distributing malware, with a list of what things I'd done to clean up the site and prevent further malware distribution - which was difficult as I was never distributing malware to begin with. Just a static website for a wordle variant, no ads or other 3rd party content.
commandersaki|4 months ago
marssaxman|4 months ago
BeetleB|4 months ago
Downloading email via POP or IMAP? Ever since I started using email in the 90's. I never deviated from it. In the old days, even the free mail hosts gave you POP access.
My own domain? Doing it for over 20 years.
layer8|4 months ago
bks|4 months ago
It certainly does not get around the ...if your account gets banned maybe the forwards will still work... concept but in general something like https://github.com/joeyates/imap-backup to backup your email and then add them to a typical backup process with your other files works well.
mcv|4 months ago
1. Email providers need to be required to forward your email to your new address for a year if you ever lose your email for any reason.
2. Domain registrars need to save your domain name for a year and allow you ample time to reregister if you ever let it lapse for any reason.
ozim|4 months ago
Then use mail client instead of webmail. I use thunderbird and have multiple boxes I just backup Thunderbird profiles folder to my NAS.
cosmic_cheese|4 months ago
hu3|4 months ago
commandersaki|4 months ago
throwaway2037|4 months ago
A light Google search tells me that it is possible with several different providers to pay for up to 10 years in advance. Still, the exact same issues can happen at the 10 years and 1 day mark! How do large corporations handle this problem? Do they have a special contract where the domain register will always keep the domain registered, then bill the corporation directly? That seems like a business venture with juicy margins.
lifestyleguru|4 months ago
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
brulard|4 months ago
iamnothere|4 months ago
In before:
* running your own mail is too much of a burden
* I used to host my own mail but I couldn’t figure out DNS or used a bad IP or something and Microsoft/Gmail won’t accept my mail
* if “they” want to ban you they will just seize your domain or kick down your door and shoot your dog
* it’s good that they can ban you from your email because I don’t like spam
Edit: lol, I was not in fact “in before” the comment about domain seizures. Unbelievable.
aussieguy1234|4 months ago
For most people, who are not doing anything shady/controversial with their domain and are using a .com or .net domain (which are price regulated by ICANN), are not using a shady registrar and will always have the cash on hand to renew as needed, the answer will be Google and co.
Its a good idea to set up auto-renew on a credit card, so you can be sure it will go through and you won't forget to renew it.
commandersaki|4 months ago
aussieguy1234|4 months ago
Most domain registrars will at least have some customer support.
But good luck getting support for a free gmail account.
Anamon|4 months ago
You don't have to go with a major mail hosting service to prevent deliverability issues. Any one of the hundreds of thousands of small local hosting providers should do. I've been with two tiny, local, "boutique" hosters for over 20 years and never noticed any issues. I also have it on good authority that entirely self-hosted e-mail is not as tricky as some like to claim. Set up your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC properly, and obviously don't send any spam or be an open relay, and even Google and Microsoft should have no worries doing business with you. Heck, if abuse scores were that important, Google and Microsoft would be the first hosts anyone would ban.
Also, catch-all is a terrible idea. I used to do it in the mid-2000s. Think about your current spam levels and multiply it by a thousand when every spammer can try jack@, john@, joe@, etc., and everything is delivered. Add to that all the spammers that use something@your-domain as a fake sender, so you get all the non-delivery reports. Ugh.
I used to do this to track leaks and non-consensual passing on of my address (the old registering at Company X with company-x@). This worked a few times, but after a few years I noticed that the amount of breaches and leaks soon make it useless. At this point, according to HaveIBeenPwned, most of the addresses I ever used have been in 20+ leaks each. It just not worth the effort anymore.
internet_points|4 months ago
As a bonus, if you install notmuch you get quick offline searches and can "mine" your email with shell scripts (or easily share it with sam altman if you're into that kind of thing).
(Alternatively, if you prefer being GUI, just install Thunderbird – this can also download your full imap and give you local search. You don't even have to use Thunderbird for it to be useful as a backup; it's probably the easiest way to quickly become more independent from google randomly deciding your account should be locked, which does happen.)
JoshTriplett|4 months ago
hk1337|4 months ago
If I host my blog, assuming I actually start making posts, on GitHub with a custom domain, when I die then the domain will likely expire and the blog is no longer accessible. If I keep it with my GitHub .io url, it’ll be there for as long as the account is there.
simojo|4 months ago
The author makes a good point, your email address is (arguably) more important than your home address. Perhaps there already are, but I hope for better safeguards against these kinds of attacks.
dotancohen|4 months ago
1. Specific known compromised TO addresses are sent to devnull.
2. Specific FROM senders are whitelisted.
3. Three or sometimes four heuristics engines evaluate. If any of them pass the mail, it goes to a separate new-senders inbox. I thus get maybe a dozen spam messages per week in that box - and five figures of messages rejected.
I used to tweak it a lot, now I just occasionally add another FROM address to the whitelist.
kibwen|4 months ago
Alive-in-2025|4 months ago
About once a month I go and drop myself from the latest lists. There are many magazines and whatnot where you can sign someone up for 100+ mails a day. Only a very few of them send you a message you have to ack to start the flood. Most just start the firehose without checking.
I'd like to hear what other people do to address this.
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
commandersaki|4 months ago
whycome|4 months ago
tadasv|4 months ago
Not sure what's the best way to handle this, I had my gmail account since the early days and it's baked into so many important accounts. It definitely crosses my mind what it'd be really difficult if I were blocked out somehow.
Evidlo|4 months ago
Tepix|4 months ago
Also when you pick an email provider, pick one with a good privacy policy.
jsbisviewtiful|4 months ago
mobilemidget|4 months ago
ROBLOX_MOMENTS|4 months ago
8cvor6j844qw_d6|4 months ago
Personal email domains makes you very identifiable just by lookung at your domain.
Using aliasing services (e.g. Mozilla Relay, Addy.io, etc.) with their default address generation ensures your email address itself does not disclose your domains when the eventual data breach occurs.
Plus catch-all addresses makes you an easy target for spam by sending to any email address on that domain vs need to know specific email address on typical email services.
caminanteblanco|4 months ago
jadenPete|4 months ago
unanimous|4 months ago
There's a chance forwarding is better than fetching. I once had a Gmail account stolen, and account recovery was locked for some reason, but email forwarding had been set up and I was still able to get all emails the address received.
In case it's relevant, I happen to use Fastmail now and their "mail fetch" feature involves imap.
layer8|4 months ago
Before SPF and the like, it used to be trivial to also send email with a different From address (like your existing Gmail address) from your own server, but that’s not the case anymore.
wtf77|4 months ago
cosmic_cheese|4 months ago
They can also serve as a sort of snapshot of a certain point in time that’s very effective at jogging your memory. I’ve had occasions where old emails reminded me of things that happened that I’d nearly forgotten or conflated details about.
jrm4|4 months ago
sdf4j|4 months ago
Are there registrars that let you walk in with a physical ID to proof you are you in case your email gets compromised and they get access to the registrar? Any experience with that?
lxgr|4 months ago
Why bet on that instead of doing it the other way around (i.e. making the self-operated mail server the primary that forwards to the service provider inbox), or at least practicing doing so by pointing the MX records accordingly?
pseidemann|4 months ago
dzhiurgis|4 months ago
What I’m slowly doing is staggering my addresses by importance - trying to separate personal from all the spam / registration / etc.
Saying that it’s probably been years since I used email to actually message someone.
trallnag|4 months ago
gblargg|4 months ago
[1] https://www.mailgw.com
binarymax|4 months ago
bigstrat2003|4 months ago
cipehr|4 months ago
geor9e|4 months ago
fnord77|4 months ago
halfcat|4 months ago
RachelF|4 months ago
mxuribe|4 months ago
cosmin800|4 months ago
kameit00|4 months ago
(alternatives for other OS: https://alternativeto.net/software/mailsteward/)
Then I put the database on multiple backup locations regularly.
Another thing, some people do not already know: If you don't need a throwaway-adress for some services, and you just want to make your mailbox more structured, you can use '+' before the '@' to add another word to your email adress.
Like: your.name+randomName@gmail.com
The +randomName will be ignored and the emails are received at your.name@gmail.com. But most Servers (I use) will put a '[randomName]' before the subject of the received email. Which can be quite handy for handling your emails. Even more, if the company uses multiple different adresses to send you emails.
shaicoleman|4 months ago
I've switched 3 years ago to a hosted forwarding service forwardemail.net
Pros:
* Allows to switch email providers if needed
* Allows to forward email to multiple providers
* Allows to store backups of emails
* Allows to have emails on multiple domains for different contexts (personal/professional/projects/etc.)
* Allows to have different email addresses per service. If you get spam on that email address you can just stop forwarding emails for it.
* Allows to have reliable mail rules based on the email address
* Allows also to send emails from multiple addressses
* Most spam is filtered before it reaches the inbox
* Open source
* Would be easy to switch to a different email forwarding service if needed (or self host it).
* Excellent track record over 8+ years
Cons:
* They have the potential to snoop on your emails. Any service that's really important would have 2FA enabled, so I accept the risk.
* They have the potential to send emails on your behalf - again, they've earned my trust, so I accept the risk for that.
* Add another point possible failure. So far I haven't noticed any issues with it.
* There's greylisting that delays emails for 5 minutes if they are not on the whitelist, which affects some of less common sending services.
* In very rare cases, some services ban registering with a forwarding email addresses.
* You need to make sure you don't lose your domain. I renew it 5 years before expiry with a reputable domain registrar (NameCheap).
Overall, it's been working great for me.
sunnybeetroot|4 months ago
predkambrij|4 months ago
bxsioshc|4 months ago
iamnothere|4 months ago
The contractual requirements that ICANN imposes upon registrars. They can’t just take your domain for any old reason. The rules are fairly well defined and registrars can lose their accreditation if they do not follow them.
https://www.icann.org/en/contracted-parties/accredited-regis...
VariousPrograms|4 months ago
IlikeKitties|4 months ago
IlikeKitties|4 months ago
This is not sufficient. Even your domain can be seized. There is no way for any service dependent on the DNS System to be irrevocably owned.
toast0|4 months ago
All you need to do is get an ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 code issued for you, and then never change your name, and you're golden.
iamnothere|4 months ago
commandersaki|4 months ago