I’ve been looking at using email aliases services, and right now I’m thinking of using Simplelogin for all my online accounts and accounts where I can change my email easily, and getting my own domain to share with people and where I can’t easily update my email. It seems like I shouldn’t use my own domain for online services because it would be unique and can be tracked.
I did lots of reading about this and am still wondering why someone would want to opt for catch-all domains over aliases. Catch-alls seem highly susceptible to spam and while I haven’t actually done any email aliasing yet, it doesn’t seem to take much effort to make a new alias if you have a plan with unlimited aliases.
Low effort to make a new alias, versus no effort to make a new catch-all address.
When you own a domain name, you own it forever. You don’t depend on the third party, they can’t take it away from you.
Catch all email addresses are good for convenience, and limiting who can talk to you, but as you pointed out not for anonymity, if you need to be anonymous, you can’t use an email alias service that you pay for either. You have to use tor, and disposable email addresses.
Plus you can automate your inbox, auto route some emails to another mailbox, auto purge males to this inbox, it’s totally in your control.
It’s all down to your threat model and convenience, personally for myself, being able to know that Xfinity has leaked my email address again, and I just block that Xfinity email address from getting any mail. That’s great.
As far as random spam, it does happen occasionally, it’s fairly rare
When you own a domain name, you own it forever. You don’t depend on the third party, they can’t take it away from you.
Really? You can lose your domain for various reasons, that is not impossible.
It’s great for emails on account’s where they know you, like banks and doctors offices. It also lets you make em up on the fly instead of using the site or app. I’ve never had spam issues, but it does make the email less anonymous. So it’s a situational thing, but nice to just use DDS@xyz.abc when at the dentist or whatever.
Another consideration: changing email providers. Any email address using your custom domain can travel with you to other providers, where you can just set up another catch-all address. Aliases are specific to your email provider, so if you want to switch, you’d need to manually go to every site and update each login to a new alias.
And you can always get two domains–one for your more sensitive stuff, and a cheap generic one for the rest. A lot of domains are dirt cheap if you don’t care what the TLD is.
Catch-alls are more easily traceable, yes, but depending on your privacy concerns vs convenience (and your fear of getting locked out of an account if your alias becomes unavailable, for example), it might be worth it for you.
