Hi there!
Context: After the recent debacle with Proton I was finally pushed to look for other alternatives. I had already wanted to change services for a while so it was nice to get the final push. It's still a good service, open-source and all. I personally just wanted to look for something else. However, I had not realised how deeply I was integrated into the email+alias feature they had, and how much work it is to change out of this, I have a fair amount of accounts.
I have now found a new email provider and bought a new domain. However I've got a few questions for those to who rock custom domains:
- Do you use random strings before the @ sign? Or do you use it like lemmy@example.com?
- Because I'm considering using this as a catch-all address, doesn't this mean that anyone who wants (and knows the domain) and send spam on any random string before the @? Are you worried about this, and are there any counters to this?
- As far as I've understood the main benefit of using my own domain for email, is that it will make it a lot easier to change providers in the future, as I can just change the nameservers so traffic is directed elsewhere - correct?
Thanks for any input, experiences or thoughts about this.
Ps. My threatmodel isn't that complex, I mainly want to stop spam from any potential services selling my email.
I have a domain specifically for email. It’s a catch-all and points to whichever email provider I feel like. I have
admin@…,info@…, etc. sent to:blackhole:to prevent most common random spam. I use[entity]@example.comand make up email addresses on the fly for each entity I interact with. If it ever starts receiving spam, I:blackhole:it.I use https://www.mxroute.com/ to manage my forwarders. This allows me to route certain aliases to multiple inboxes and uses cPanel so it’s a familiar interface if you’ve ever used it. I paid like for 10 years at once because it averaged out to being super-cheap yearly that way.
In the past my web hosting provider had catch-alls but they removed that feature.