I’ve recently been working to minimize my email clutter, my dependance on certain email providers, and to consolidate services under certain accounts.

I’m down to the following uses:
Apple ID, mydomain-billing/subscriptions, mydomain-official/legal, anon, friends/family, business domain.

I also have a handful of aliases and an account just for newsletters and my RSS app.

I’m curious if others have several email addresses for similar uses or if you use your email client to categorize incoming messages for you. For people who only have one email address, how do you manage this?

  • originalucifer
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    304 months ago

    i use a different address for almost every destination, all aliasing from a main domain. in this way i can track who sells my info.

    • @Num10ck
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      144 months ago

      any notable surprises you care to shame?

      • @[email protected]
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        164 months ago

        Not OP but Under Armor sells your shit instantly in my experience. I’ve got the same setup and just turn the address off after I get my order. I must have got forwarded 2-3 spam things a day before I killed it.

      • Prison Mike
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        94 months ago

        I do the same thing with email aliases and I’ve deactivated just two in the years I’ve been doing it.

        One the comes to mind is Scentbird, they get hacked like every month because they’re on some shitty Wordpress server so they unintentionally leak your data all the time.

      • originalucifer
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        64 months ago

        honestly, nothing to really report. this could be confirmation bias as i tend to avoid the problem actors( the facebooks, the fly-by-night vendors), but I have yet to see any egregious address-sharing in the last several years.

        i still get quite a bit if spam from places that used to broadcast email addresses on their sites like early versions of the SETI distributed processing project

        • @residentmarchant
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          24 months ago

          I find the exact same thing. I always use an alias when signing up for some stupid parking app or new healthcare system that I can’t avoid and I’ve surprisingly never seen the aliases being re-used by anybody but them.

          I was expecting at least a data breach, but it’s been clean for the past 10 yrs or so.

          It’s possible data brokers are just good at stripping whatever is behind the “+” though.

          • originalucifer
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            4 months ago

            im using a bucketed approach so i dont use the +… i add the vendor name into the email address so its always something like [email protected] for amazon (for example)

            • Prison Mike
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              24 months ago

              I don’t do the + thing either, I just use a password generator to generate the prefix before @

      • @Lemming421
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        54 months ago

        Kickstarter are the ones for me - I get spam unrelated to any projects I’ve backed, so somehow they got hold of that address…

    • Ænima
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      14 months ago

      Pretty much why I’m glad I switched to Proton. They came out with Proton Pass, which includes aliasing, and I haven’t looked back. So far, I haven’t had any leak. However, I have come up against one, some shop service used by some companies, such as Vessi and CrunchLab. It uses the email address you put in with the first company you bought from. Kind of annoying but not deal breaking.

  • tmpod
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    4 months ago

    I have multiple domains and backup addresses on ProtonMail, so technically I have infinite addresses :P

    I split mails domains at the identity level, and addresses (under my custom domains, for proton I use their simplelogin integration) are split between services, even though I use my main one in most places still.

  • Tywèle [she|her]
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    4 months ago

    I only have one email address from ProtonMail but I make extensive use of their “Additional Addresses” feature and I use ProtonPass email aliases. There are only a few sites which know my real email address (around 15 I think).

    Edit: technically I also have a Gmail address but I’m trying to get rid of that since it has my deadname in it.

  • @norimee
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    64 months ago

    Two.

    One “official” with my name attached to it and one “trash” for places I don’t want to give any real data to.

  • RachelRodent
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    54 months ago

    3 real adresses: personal, professional, school assigned. Countless aliasses

  • @[email protected]
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    44 months ago

    3 mailboxes

    • Work
    • Personal (general use)
    • Personal (Important personal stuff)

    That last email is for things I don’t want to risk reading in public. It’s the one I give to my doctor, financial advisor, insurance, tax authority, etc.

  • Jeena
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    44 months ago

    I use two actively but technically I have a gmail adress but only use it to log in to YouTube with it. If you sent me an email there I will probably never see it.

  • @[email protected]
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    34 months ago

    I have a wildcard rule set up to catch things sent to addresses on my domain that I don’t have explicitly configured… so technically, I have infinite email addresses.

  • SavvyWolf
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    34 months ago

    I have a “professional” email with my real name and one with my “online” name. They used to both be on gmail but now they are on Protonmail.

    I also have some domain names I own which I can set up with Protonmail as the provider… Kinda tempted to move everything over to my domain so that I can switch providers if I need to without having to update things.

  • @zxqwas
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    34 months ago

    Work, gmail with a regrettable name i picked in my teens and can’t be bothered to migrate away from. Other gmail that I only have on my phone. Work mail, personal mai with firstname@uniquesurname

  • @[email protected]
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    34 months ago

    I have one paid email address that’s my main that I purchased from an overseas provider, just to complicate spying and reduce perverse motivations to use my data to profit.

    I have a secondary older email address, a professional work email address, and then a long tail of anti-spam aliases.

  • 2ugly2live
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    24 months ago

    I had 2 main ones, but they also got emails from one of my old accounts, for technically 3. But I just moved to Proton mail, so now I’m trying to stick with one + aliases. I’m hoping to keep it this way 😤

    • @SLVRDRGN
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      14 months ago

      How do you like it? I was thinking of going that route, especially with their Easy Switch tool.

      • 2ugly2live
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        24 months ago

        I actually really like it! It’s much more organized and I don’t feel overwhelmed having to look through and remember different accounts. And the alias feature has been amazing. Much simpler than making a temp email address. Setting it up wasn’t bad and they walk you through forwarding and all that stuff. I had 2-3 Gmail accounts before the switch and I honestly won’t go back, even if Proton vanished tomorrow.