DK1MI.radio

How I do Email

I’ve used one single mail address for over a decade until it was involved in some breaches and thereupon has been sold to spammers. This address has been rendered unusable for me because I was drowning in spam since then. I’ve then decided to start over with a custom domain, unique mail addresses per website/account and to update all my online accounts to the new addresses. In fact, I am now using 200+ mail addresses.

The new system

Benefits

If an address is sold to spammers or a website gets compromised and my mail address gets stolen, I now immediately will know where the leak was. Furthermore, all mails sent to this address can then be automatically deleted with a filter rule.

Leaked mail addresses are constantly used e.g. in credential stuffing attacks. If I would use the same address anywhere, the attackers would then have one of (most of the time) two factors, the user name. It can furthermore be problematic if someone looks up a mail address in haveibeenpwned.com. People would then know where I have user accounts/memberships and might get the wrong impression on how I chose and handle passwords.

If someone asks me on the phone or in person for my mail address, I don’t have to think about whom I give which address. I just generate one in my head and give it away.

Downsides

I have not identified any downsides of this approach yet. One could fear that it’s impossible to keep track of where which address is in use. But since I am using a password manager, the mail addresses are documented there so it is not an issue to me.

Improvements

I am thinking about changing the “public password” on a yearly basis in a way, that it reflects the year. One idea is to use the hex value of the year when the mail address has been created. This makes generating new addresses for the same account easier (if it doesn’t happen twice a year) and helps with the filtering of burnt addresses.

Thank you for reading! If you have any comments or questions, please send me an e-mail.

#Email