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How to Handle Web Sites Asking for Your Email Address (seattletimes.com) 117

When you share your email, "you're sharing a lot more," warns the New York Times' lead consumer technology writer: [I]t can be linked to other data, including where you went to school, the make and model of the car you drive, and your ethnicity....

For many years, the digital ad industry has compiled a profile on you based on the sites you visit on the web.... An email could contain your first and last name, and assuming you've used it for some time, data brokers have already compiled a comprehensive profile on your interests based on your browsing activity. A website or an app can upload your email address into an ad broker's database to match your identity with a profile containing enough insights to serve you targeted ads.

The article recommends creating several email addresses to "make it hard for ad tech companies to compile a profile based on your email handle... Apple and Mozilla offer tools that automatically create email aliases for logging in to an app or a site; emails sent to the aliases are forwarded to your real email address." Apple's Hide My Email tool, which is part of its iCloud+ subscription service that costs 99 cents a month, will create aliases, but using it will make it more difficult to log in to the accounts from a non-Apple device. Mozilla's Firefox Relay will generate five email aliases at no cost; beyond that, the program charges 99 cents a month for additional aliases.

For sites using the UID 2.0 framework for ad targeting, you can opt out by entering your email address [or phone number] at https://transparentadvertising.org.

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How to Handle Web Sites Asking for Your Email Address

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  • Scary thought (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @06:31PM (#63249597)

    But just get a throw away email... They are free. Why is this article on this site? Who here doesn't already know this? This isn't fucking facebook or twitter or instagram. Seriously!!!

    • by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @07:10PM (#63249685) Homepage Journal

      But just get a throw away email... They are free. Why is this article on this site? Who here doesn't already know this? This isn't fucking facebook or twitter or instagram. Seriously!!!

      Because throw-away E-mails don't work.

      Someone went and catalogued all the throw-away E-mail sites, put them into a library and generated an API. This got incorporated into just about all the mainstream website applications, everyone uses that one API, and now none of them work.

      Simple as that. Who here doesn't already know *that*?

      • by Anonymous Coward
        So the next step is to make the process ridiculously simple.

        One docker container that contains a simple website. Register example.tld, point it to your VPS, spin up the docker image and pass it the options -e MY_ADMIN_PASSWORD=hunter123, and then you can surf to it and sign in. Using the interface, 'register' a MX server. Copy the API key it spits out, and spin up a second docker image where you pass it -e API_KEY=blah and -e SITE=example.tld. That links the MX server to the web interface. Go regist
        • by Revek ( 133289 )
          Even more simple I have several domains that are only for the email. I currently have them hosted on the cheapest mxroute plan. I don't run out of emails. Luckily two of them used to be dialup ISP domains so they have the taint of legitimacy.
      • by nyet ( 19118 )

        > Someone went and catalogued all the throw-away E-mail sites

        Not mine.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        There are different forms of throw-away emails. Some are entirely unaffected by this catalog you refer to.

      • Some sites don't even allow myname@mydomain.com. They insist on a Google or other "legit" email address.

      • Someone went and catalogued all the throw-away E-mail sites, put them into a library and generated an API. This got incorporated into just about all the mainstream website applications, everyone uses that one API, and now none of them work.

        Huh? What service is this?

        • There are many of them:

          An example:
          https://www.istempmail.com/ [istempmail.com]

          Others:
          https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Huh? What service is this?

          You should know the oldest one - mailinator.com. Basically you have an email sent to <anything>@mailinator.com. Then you visit mailinator.com and enter that key and it returns a list of emails that key has received.

          After 30 days it's deleted. It's basically an email service where there's no security - anyone can use and check emails at will.

          • Mailinator isn't useful for web site signups, though, not unless you want anyone to be able to reset your password.
      • by khchung ( 462899 )

        Because throw-away E-mails don't work.

        Then just don't bother with businesses that won't accept throw-away email addresses. Send a message to their business contact that they just lost a customer because they won't accept your email, goodbye.

      • What?
        Who doesn't use gmail as their junk mail alternative, just with a junk mail name?

        I'm with the op, this is pretty obvious.

      • > Someone went and catalogued all the throw-away E-mail sites, put them into a library and generated an API.

        Is gmail one of them? That's one of my throw away email sites.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Easy way around it, just set up your own disposable email system. Hopefully you already have a domain so you aren't using @hotmail.com and living in constant fear of Microsoft terminating your email account, that you got painted on the side of your van and all your business cards.

        You can either create a load of aliases, or just redirect any non-defined addresses to a special inbox. You only need to check it for those confirmation emails. Set it to delete mails older than 24 hours. Or just forward to mailina

      • My definition of throw away my be different, but I have numerous emails that I can access that I truly don't care who has them. They aren't used for important things and if they get spammed, Who cares. You can sign up for all sorts of emails, for free. So technically the email addresses are legit but they certainly don't matter. I also have email addresses I don't give out unless I really trust or need to work with.

        So whateverIwant@yahoo.com is a perfectly valid email that I can give out to whoever I want a

      • I use a throwaway email every time I create a new Reddit trolling account. It hasn't failed yet.

    • Why is this article on this site?

      Same reason the CSS is stuck in 2002.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      no@no.no

  • Uh, obious choice (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    No mention of DuckDuckGo's email privacy thing?

    I wouldn't use it for important stuff but if you just need to generate throwaway addresses it's perfect. Free, unlimited, you can both receive AND send using it, etc. It filters trackers in mail too in case you forget to turn off remote resources.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    made a script to put in a random fake gmail in every one of those pop-ups. They send a mail to a bogus account, it raises their spam score. If enough people poison the well it'll make it more expensive for them to do this bullshit.

  • Own domain (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29, 2023 @06:41PM (#63249617)
    I've got my own domain, and the catchall filter directs everything that isn't a real email address...to the default email address. So I give "dodgycompany.com" my email "dodgycompany.com@mydomain" That way I can see which fsckers tried to sell my data, and filter that address to /dev/null
    • You can do this with a single account on any email server that has ignored characters. So for example@google.com you can use exam.ple@gmail.com or exam.p.le@gmail.com with hundreds of variants. If you know who you gave the variant to, you’ll know who sold you out.
      • With gmail, it'd be more readily visible to use the + character. Mail sent to example+slashdot@gmail.com will actually just go to example@gmail.com. Easier to keep track of than variations of period characters.

        That being said, I also have my own domain(s), but instead of a "catchall" address, I create specific aliases. If one starts getting spammed, I just delete that alias.

        • Some sites donâ(TM)t allow the + (or other legal extensions). I just use iClouds Hide My E-mail. It also allows turning an email alias off.
        • by piojo ( 995934 )

          That being said, I also have my own domain(s), but instead of a "catchall" address, I create specific aliases. If one starts getting spammed, I just delete that alias.

          You can do the same thing with a catchall address. If a certain address starts receiving spam, you can create an inbox with that address and delete its incoming messages (or just filter based on recipient). It a question of whether you prefer more effort on the account creation side or the spam blocking side. Since I normally don't need to do the filter treatment, a catchall inbox is the lowest effort solution.

    • by crow ( 16139 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @08:01PM (#63249767) Homepage Journal

      I did a variation on this. I found that i get enough random spam for info@mydomain and such that I only accept mail that starts with a given prefix. I wrote a custom filter program that looks for a match in a bounce directory, and if it finds one, it increments a counter in the file and then bounces the mail, otherwise it sends it to my real mailbox. My ISP found I was sending too many bounces (most of the spam is from forged from addresses), so at their request, I turned off the bounces, so it just drops those messages.

      I get very little spam.

      I also set my from address in my email client to have a date code in it. The majority of spam I get now is from people who have been hit with malware that sends to everyone in their contacts, and I can usually figure out who that was. I've given up trying to address that, though, since it's usually my mom.

    • On my domain I generate aliases like company-xjsd232fvj@example.com (half is random), such that if a human reads it they cannot guess more working addresses. Different approach than a catchall, I want them to fail at guessing email addresses. My only problem is aliases don't allow me to write e-mails with a From: so I have to reveal an actual mailbox to contact customer support (or convert the alias into a mailbox and delete it later -- more work).

    • I have the same setup, and did this one time working with a small company on the East coast.

      They freaked out and cited copyright/trademark/whatever they could saying I had to change my email address or they would sue me.

      (facepalm)

    • Re:Own domain (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Waccoon ( 1186667 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @02:13AM (#63250217)

      I have my own domain, too, as I have for over 25 years. In the last decade, I've noticed an increasing number of companies that won't accept or forward mail unless it comes from a big well-known domain. So, a lot of my mail, both inbound and outbound, tends to just disappear. It wreaked havoc on my forum, because some people could join and others couldn't.

      The Internet is such a different place these days, I hardly recognize it.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Do you have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up?

        These days, due to spam and phishing, a lot of servers won't accept mail from servers that don't have a fairly high level of security.

        • Same boat. Same problem. Yes, SPF, DKIM, DMARC are all setup correctly. Sending small numbers of email per year (maybe 300 messages total).

          The big problem children are Microsoft and AT&T. They, by default, bounce block everything until the IP is whitelisted. They don't bother with DNSRBLs and just assume all explicitly uncleared traffic is spam and also drag their feet on whitelisting systems. And even after whitelisting, all messages get dropped in spam. Can receive emails from them no problem A

      • I have my own domain, too, as I have for over 25 years. In the last decade, I've noticed an increasing number of companies that won't accept or forward mail unless it comes from a big well-known domain.

        I've never seen that, nor have any of the two dozen other users of mail in my domain. That said, that may be because while I have my own domain, it's actually hosted by Google, so their server IP addresses and they have all of the email security bells and whistles set up for my account.

        I think maybe your issue isn't your domain, but where you're hosting it and how it's configured.

    • I do the same plus if an address gets abused/leaked I can easily target it with a rule and stop it dead.
    • by leptons ( 891340 )
      Exactly what I've been doing for so many years. It works great until someone at a business (let's say Hertz car rental) asks you what your email is, and you tell them "hertz@myspecialdomain.com" and they say "hertz"??? (or whatever their company name is). They're confused and then I have to explain to them that's how I track who is selling my email address. It almost never makes it into their head and I have to explain it a second or third time. A few people get it, but most do not and never will, and I hav
      • It works great until someone at a business (let's say Hertz car rental) asks you what your email is, and you tell them "hertz@myspecialdomain.com" and they say "hertz"???

        Then use some other token word that you can mentally connect with the company, like "zcar". In fact I keep a list of every token word I use for companies.

        • by leptons ( 891340 )
          I'd rather not have to remember what is what, and just naming it after the company makes it easy for my wife to do as well.
  • by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @06:44PM (#63249627)

    Every single online account I have is linked to a unique email address on a 1-to-1 basis. When I start getting spam, I know exactly who sold or leaked my email address, and I can demand explanation and/or cut them out.

    Similarly, I never give my real name, address or any other personal details to any company except for job, legal, utility companies, etc. Everyone else gets unique, generated fake profile details. This once again enables me to know who stole/sold/leaked my data just by the name someone references me by alone.

    • by NobleNobbler ( 9626406 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @06:49PM (#63249645)

      This sounds interesting, but so laborious.

      • by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @07:10PM (#63249683) Homepage Journal

        This sounds interesting, but so laborious.

        SpamGourmet does this automatically.

        For each new site you generate a new name using the name of the site. For example, if you register on SpamGourmet as NobleNobbler, when you get an account at foobar you can enter "foobar.9.NobleNobbler@SpamGourmet.com". This will automatically generate a new E-mail, forward messages to your home E-mail, and limit the account to 9 messages total.

        You can adjust the message limit if you need more, or you can set the address to "single sender" (in this case foobar.com), in which case the messages are unlimited and any messages *not* from foobar.com are deleted.

        I've used this for many years - works a treat.

        • SpamGourmet does this automatically.
          ......
          I've used this for many years - works a treat.

          So have I. You can also set a sender to "Trusted" which puts no limit on mails from their domain (and rescind it if necessary). You can also send an email out via Spamgourmet that makes it appear to originate from any address you have created.

      • by nyet ( 19118 )

        No, it isn't at all if you have your own domain.

        • by Barny ( 103770 )

          This.

          Get a cheap domain from Cloudflare, set the default route for email to your actual email account, then knock yourself out making as many email addresses as you want. Bonus points if you name the domain something that sounds like a big mail service.

          For cents a month you can have all the email addresses you've ever wanted.

      • This sounds interesting, but so laborious.

        Why? Why is it more laborious to give a fake name or throwaway email than a real one? I have several fake identities and addresses ready to give to websites if I see an advantage in it.

    • Every single online account I have is linked to a unique email address on a 1-to-1 basis. When I start getting spam, I know exactly who sold or leaked my email address, and I can demand explanation and/or cut them out.

      Did the exact same thing with my own domain for years too.

      How the hell did you keep up with the spam? Even using unique addys for each vendor still made it obvious they whored out my information to more than one party. Gave up after a while and started focusing more on filtering email.

      • How the hell did you keep up with the spam?

        What spam? I've been doing the exact same thing for my domains for sixteen years now, and I get little to no spam. That's because the whole point of using unique email addresses on my domains is to be able to disable any that start getting spam. I've had to disable two or three over the years that started receiving spam from other companies (I'm looking at you, Best Buy), but my spam level for my hundreds of email accounts is negligible.

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @08:29PM (#63249825)

      Every single online account I have is linked to a unique email address on a 1-to-1 basis. When I start getting spam, I know exactly who sold or leaked my email address, and I can demand explanation and/or cut them out.

      I used to do exactly that for two decades, 1997-2017. Then five years ago I decided to simplify my tech life, and switched to just giving every single website my real email address -- and it hasn't made any difference! I still get about the same amount of spam. I still use the unsubscribe button and it works more or less the same. I still get spam from "Renewal by Andersen" like I always did, and I still filter it out with rules.

      So my limited experience (sample size 1) is that "use multiple email addresses" brings no real benefit and if it takes even one iota extra effort then it's not worth doing.

      • So my limited experience (sample size 1) is that "use multiple email addresses" brings no real benefit and if it takes even one iota extra effort then it's not worth doing.

        It seems to me that having to maintain such a large filter list is at least as much work as maintaining multiple aliases, and gives you less information about how your address was pilfered.

        Of course, if you're using a Windows server, I can see how that can easily cause a ton more work than simply editing /etc/aliases.

        • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

          It seems to me that having to maintain such a large filter list is at least as much work as maintaining multiple aliases, and gives you less information about how your address was pilfered.

          Oh, my filter list consists of only one single rule: if the subject line matches "renewal by anderson" (with various capitalizations, hyphens, ...) then junk it. From five years of giving my true email address, I've not needed any other rules -- the unsubscribe button and Exchange365's lackluster spam-filtering have been entirely adequate.

          I realized there was no benefit to learn how my address was pilfered. When I was younger I had tech nerd fantasies about confronting someone who leaked my email address wi

  • by neilo_1701D ( 2765337 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @06:44PM (#63249631)

    I use the Apple feature all the time. Spin up a disposable email address and block it straight away. Simples! But people don't know the already?

  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @06:45PM (#63249633) Homepage

    DuckDuckGo offers free emails connected to existing accounts.
    Works well.

  • That is lately a more ugrent question.

  • by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @07:14PM (#63249697)
    I have a domain for generating email addresses specifically for this type of thing. I also use alias's for my real email account and never give out the underlying email address so I can replace my email aliases at will. It is cheap to do and means you protect your privacy AND can ditch addresses at will with no real negative consequences when an address is inevitably leaked or gets on too many spam lists.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29, 2023 @07:17PM (#63249705)

    This is something I handle a number of ways, just because I had a mail provider get hacked, which exfiltrated my "real" mail addresses.

    First, I use aliases. In the past, "+" aliases worked, for example, user+spamsite@whatever.com, but the spammers are smart and figured out the "+" thing. So, I just use different aliases without that symbol. If it gets hit hard, I have a filter to redirect emails, or delete the alias. I prefer to redirect to a spam bucket, so I don't reuse the alias.

    Second, I use a different domain for work email and job hunt stuff. This way, anything to that address, I know is something work related, and when I'm done job hunting, I can shut it off. I also have a separate address for family.

    Of course, being on the Net for so long, I have the antediluvian Yahoo and Hotmail accounts which are used as spamcatchers. Some no-name site demands email, they got it. They demand a cell phone SMS, here is my burner ID, which I know will be spammed to hell and gone, because it has unlimited texts, and goes to a flip phone that is always on silent mode.

    Problem is that even the best address "sanitation" doesn't work. I've had mail providers get hacked, so the main accounts started getting hammered with phishing attempts. Contacts get hacked, some shiny new Android fleshlight app that is popular demands one allow it to access contacts on someone's phone who doesn't know better, so all those go to a set of bad guys. So, every few years, I drop an old domain, add a new one.

  • I always used to use customized email accounts, often with the + delimiter. But lately I don't hardly bother. I only rare ever see a spam message in my inbox, and I've not seen any web ads in many years thanks to uBlock Origin. And I block external tracking cookies with PrivacyBadger. So what little tracking actually gets through does an advertiser no good since I'll never see it. Although now I'm a bit curious to know what the ad trackers think they know about me.

  • i seen popups that dont have a x in the corner so i would not close the popup askng for my email and i just close the browser, i never let clickbait coerce me into divulging personal info
  • My email is full! Roy in IT told me my computer will literally explode if I get another email.

  • by G00F ( 241765 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @08:17PM (#63249799) Homepage

    I can't stand how many websites and other things are requiring phone numbers, or requiring apps on the f--ing phone.

    Even discord servers/channels requiring phone number! I had Twitter, imigur and other accounts until they required ph number.

    my MS devel accounts keeps getting locked requiring a phone number (to which I create new account and it last a year then it gets locked requiring ph#)

    oh yea, the chat ai that's everywhere required phone number!

    • Well, pages got smart and realized that people use throwaway mail addresses to sign up. It's harder to get throwaway phone numbers.

      I think there's a market to be explored.

    • I can't stand how many websites and other things are requiring phone numbers, or requiring apps on the f--ing phone.

      Even discord servers/channels requiring phone number! I had Twitter, imigur and other accounts until they required ph number.

      my MS devel accounts keeps getting locked requiring a phone number (to which I create new account and it last a year then it gets locked requiring ph#)

      oh yea, the chat ai that's everywhere required phone number!

      Youtube is a prime example of this. If you don't provide them a valid phone number that they can test, then they make logging into YT an endless nightmare. So I avoid YT.

  • PPH@mouse-potato.com

  • Too late already (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Sunday January 29, 2023 @08:29PM (#63249823) Homepage

    You've probably already given your email address to *somebody* by now. That somebody has probably already shared it with marketers and data aggregators. They can then tie you to you anonymous browsing based on other data points like your IP address or tracking cookies. Even if you use a throw-away email address on one site, somebody else has a real one for you, and those guys can put the pieces together.

  • I have a few domain names. One of them has a *@mydomain.com redirect to my regular inbox. When I give a company an email, I give them something of the form andy.amazon@mydomain.com so that I can click the verify-your-email links, and if that email gets leaked, I know who leaked it.

  • Create a mail address for every page you sign up with and make a note which site you used it with. Never use that mail address again.

    That way you can find pretty neat connections who sells your information to whom. If you get spam for every site, no matter which it is, that's what your mail provider sells to.

    You can then start to mail between your mail addresses on various topics to see whether your mail provider reads your mails when you get on-topic spam.

    • Create a mail address for every page you sign up with and make a note which site you used it with. Never use that mail address again.

      That way you can find pretty neat connections who sells your information to whom. If you get spam for every site, no matter which it is, that's what your mail provider sells to.

      You can then start to mail between your mail addresses on various topics to see whether your mail provider reads your mails when you get on-topic spam.

      In your off hours you work for the NSA or CIA, right ? /s

  • by lpq ( 583377 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @04:52AM (#63250373) Homepage Journal

    I've been handing out separate emails to each site for over 20 years.

    Now they demand your smartphone number. They won't accept and SMS-capable number
    that is VoIP. Lovely.

    When I allowed google to call my home phone to be a callback for their google number service, I started getting robocalls 2 weeks later. So much for my privacy on google!

    It's far more annoying for companies to sell my phone number than my email. If I give them my smartphone number and have it set to only ring through white-listed (in my address book), that keeps me from getting callbacks from from companies that allow you to get a callback instead of waiting on the phone for 30-90 minutes (like Kaiser), or to receive a phone appt. Kaiser refuses to call you with 1 set number, so you have to disable your phone's route-to-email feature to get calls from them and other vendors (including apple) who don't have reasonable hold times and want to call you back via a random callback number!

  • I have multiple G-mail accounts - burners, nothing malicious. Started when playing a game and learned by creating more emails, I could get more assets. Most I use to post on different websites w/o being known aka on here also. Plus years ago while still using FB, anytime I wanted to post, it would automatically sign in with my FB account - NOPE, really pissed me off and they know EVERY website you visited - tracking ! When you work for a big company and use your real email/name and post something not to
  • The Seattle Times site, which hosts the fine article, pops up a message asking you to subscribe with your email.

  • For over 20 years I've been running my own mail server. My solution for this issue is to make a new alias for every company that wants my email address. For example, if my domain is example.com and the company that wants my email address today is xyz.com, I will make a new alias, just for them, called "xyz.com@example.com", that points to my usual email account. My alias file now contains hundreds of these. And if they want an email reply from me, with just a little extra effort I can do that too.

    The advant

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday January 30, 2023 @07:08AM (#63250469)

    So an ad company has a profile on me. Whoop de fucking do. At this point all those profiles have ever amounted to was advertising me things I have already bought. In some ways I have far less interest in things advertised me through targeted advertisement than random crap that comes through.

    What we have conclusively have shown over the past decade is that ad company's targeting is utter trash. They have all this information and haven't the slightest idea what to do with them.

    The only exception is internal analytics from the likes of big stores that know the exact products you buy and build trends based on them. E.g. Target customer account holders. They are good at actual targeted advertising. The rest of the entire internet, especially the likes of which span multiple sites is utterly useless.

    • The problem is that all that information about you is very very useful for phishing you, or, especially, your spouse.

      • You're making a big assumption about what is shared with ad companies here. I don't think too many of them would be getting names, address, date of birth, etc. That would lead to them being royally fucked by European privacy regulators. And ad companies are the only ones building these databases cross-site. Ultimately important information needs to be handed over to the primary company you're dealing with anyway (otherwise how will that new shiny thing you ordered get delivered to you).

        A far more likely sce

      • That profile is also sold to other firms. For example, health insurance providers love to know if you buy a lot of cigarettes, alcohol or junk food, so they can increase your premiums, or deny your claims.

        • That profile is also sold to other firms. For example, health insurance providers love to know if you buy a lot of cigarettes, alcohol or junk food, so they can increase your premiums, or deny your claims.

          Do you have evidence of that, or it just supposition, bolstered by confirmation bias?

          • That profile is also sold to other firms. For example, health insurance providers love to know if you buy a lot of cigarettes, alcohol or junk food, so they can increase your premiums, or deny your claims.

            Do you have evidence of that, or it just supposition, bolstered by confirmation bias?

            The way you asked the question implies that you have already made up your mind, but here are a couple of links.

            It's been going on for a while: https://hbr.org/2007/05/the-da... [hbr.org]

            This one is behind a paywall so I haven't read the whole thing: https://www.wsj.com/articles/S... [wsj.com]

            What I found really concerning is that when I searched for various permutations of "health insurer datamining" most of the results were for brokers offering datamining services. It feels like this practice has gone from "breaking scandal"

    • At this point all those profiles have ever amounted to was advertising me things I have already bought.

      I occasionally get targeted ads I really appreciate. The other day I was looking for a tablet/phone stand to put on my rowing machine, and then the next day I got an ad for a "fan bag" for my rowing machine. It's a fabric bag that wraps around the fan of the rowing machine and redirects the outgoing airflow so instead of being blown in all directions, it's all directed at the rower. Fantastic idea. I bought one and it works really well; I no longer need an electric fan to cool me while I'm working out, my o

  • Like others have mentioned, I have been using my own email domain address for years, with single-use aliases bound to a specific website. It works, but it's a PITA to setup a new alias every time you need it. So I use partial catchall aliases, like fyou*@mydomain.com and whenever I need an alias for a new website I just use a custom "From" field "fyouwebsite134@...". This works well BUT: the k-9 email android app STILL does not allow custom "From" addresses, despite the community having been asking this for

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