Hi there!

Context: After the recent debacle with Proton I was finally pushed to look for other alternatives. I had already wanted to change services for a while so it was nice to get the final push. It’s still a good service, open-source and all. I personally just wanted to look for something else. However, I had not realised how deeply I was integrated into the email+alias feature they had, and how much work it is to change out of this, I have a fair amount of accounts.

I have now found a new email provider and bought a new domain. However I’ve got a few questions for those to who rock custom domains:

  1. Do you use random strings before the @ sign? Or do you use it like [email protected]?
  2. Because I’m considering using this as a catch-all address, doesn’t this mean that anyone who wants (and knows the domain) and send spam on any random string before the @? Are you worried about this, and are there any counters to this?
  3. As far as I’ve understood the main benefit of using my own domain for email, is that it will make it a lot easier to change providers in the future, as I can just change the nameservers so traffic is directed elsewhere - correct?

Thanks for any input, experiences or thoughts about this.

Ps. My threatmodel isn’t that complex, I mainly want to stop spam from any potential services selling my email.

  • Zachariah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    6 days ago

    I have a domain specifically for email. It’s a catch-all and points to whichever email provider I feel like. I have admin@…, info@…, etc. sent to :blackhole: to prevent most common random spam. I use [entity]@example.com and make up email addresses on the fly for each entity I interact with. If it ever starts receiving spam, I :blackhole: it.

    I use https://www.mxroute.com/ to manage my forwarders. This allows me to route certain aliases to multiple inboxes and uses cPanel so it’s a familiar interface if you’ve ever used it. I paid like for 10 years at once because it averaged out to being super-cheap yearly that way.

    In the past my web hosting provider had catch-alls but they removed that feature.

    • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      This looks kinda interesting; it’s an email host that you can use across multiple domains? Does that make it easier to manage if some are little-used?

      • Zachariah@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        I don’t even use the email hosting. I just use it as alias forwarders. I do use it with multiple domains. Some are complex and some are simpler. Both are easy to manage.

        I found it when it was recommended to me as I was researching running my own mail server. I may still do that, but I didn’t have enough time to learn all I needed to at the time.

    • Sips'@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      Had no idea this was possible, very neat! Thanks for sharing 👍👍