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If using custom domain e-mails, to prevent spam, is it necessary to make addresses unpredictable (e.g.: stem-chaos-stricken@domain), or is servicename@domain good enough? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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Assuming a password manager is used, even jfav0ohjau4gvncgan19@domain should be OK.

On the other hand, I might just be overthinking it. It could even look suspicious to customer support, or is that again just overthinking?

Also, there already will necessarily be some predictable ones, such as work@domain, although servicename@domain would provide even more possible matches.

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[–] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

You'll regret it the first time you have to read it over the phone to someone. Every letter and number repeated and re-repeated only for the email you expected to wind up in jfavOOhjau4gvncga19@domain (which you should probably be able to see). The computer database you didn't want to have it got it right on the first, and all subsequent tries.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (1 child)

    which you should probably be able to see

    I've heard (from one person on the internet) some servers might scan for presence of catch-all by sending e-mail to long random string e-mail at the domain, and then potentially sending spam to anything if it doesn't get rejected.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    No idea.

    My first thought would be that sending an email to every possible random string would be a quick way to get flagged by whatever big city backend blacklisting goes on. If I were trying to set up my own email server for my own domain, unless there's some rule that says I have to, I'm not sending a no-such-address message back. Making a success and a failure look different to the attacker (which I'm going to treat spam senders as for the purposes of histrionics) is giving them a signal for free.

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