Microblog Memes

Just chiming in, if you’re using + aliases for privacy some people can just remove the plus and see your email

For example if you sign up with supercoolemail+spoof@beans.com the service can remove everything between the + and the @ and see your real email is supercoolemail@beans.com

It kinda isn't, however I found that some websites refuse to acknowledge that plusses are valid. I see this one uses dashes which might have a similar issue. Only thing I think is universally accepted are periods

It is plus aliases*. It’s got additional features for them that other providers don’t have though. Like for each label (alias) you can toggle whether to get notifications, mark as unread, screen new senders, and show them in the “aggbox”. The aggbox is like an inbox, but since you don’t ever use your “bare address”, it just shows the labels you want. Your bare address autoresponds with a list of your public addresses.

* It’s technically subaddressing, using either a dash or a plus as a delimiter.

From what I can tell, not much. They use dashes "-" instead of pluses "+".

But neither of these two options provide you with much privacy. Plus addresses, as others have pointed out, can be automatically stripped (just delete everything after the plus sign) and you get the real email behind it.

This service specifically I dont know the details, but it seems there is a unique prefix per user, but no "real email". So for instance if you use gmail you can have "sunnie@gmail.com" as your real email. You then use "sunnie+lemmy@gmail.com" for your lemmy account. If that email gets leaked out somehow, people can easily tell your real email address is "sunnie@gmail.com"

This service seems to do something very similar with the difference there is no base email, so there isnt a "sunnie@port87.com", there will only be "sunny-lemmy@port87.com". It is worth pointing out you might still be tracked because all your emails will be prefixed with "sunny". So although spammers wont be able to figure out your real email address they can just try something like "something-reddit@port87.com", and if multiple of your addresses leak it will be easy to link them all up to the same person.

This also creates A LOT of lock in. Because if the service shuts down you now have dozens of services for which you don't have means to access the emails anymore.

Thank you. :)

Those are email forwarders. Port87 is an email service. They provide a similar feature, but it’s not the same. They still rely on you to organize your email with filters and labels in your downstream email service.