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Custom email aliasing – throw-away emails using a custom domain (eric-lowry.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/programming@beehaw.org
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Hi there!

I've been eyeing email aliasing services like Firefox Relay or Proton's Hide-my-email feature for a while, but I'm cheap!
Well, that and I tend to like doing things myself whenever possible.

So after a bit of investigating I found out that using Cloudflare and a custom domain name, you can essentially get infinite free email aliases that get redirected to an existing email address (Gmail in my case, but I'm working on moving over to Proton at the moment).

One thing lead to another, and I ended up coding a Firefox extension to automatically inject aliases into email input fields using a custom domain name.

Because I find this whole setup cool, and am fairly certain that other people could benefit from it, I wrote up a full guide on my blog. I'm no Cloudflare or DNS expert, so feel free to point out any mistakes or make suggestions here or in my post's comments ;).

Note: Yes, I know that using a custom domain reduced the privacy benefits.

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2 comments in c/technology@beehaw.org view that post
[–] 3 points 1 month ago

Commenting so don't forget to check back in. 😁 Thanks for doing the legwork and then some!

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    [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    First step: DNS on cloudflare.

    Second step: fuck no! Fuck cloudflare.

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    2 comments in c/email@lemmy.sdf.org view that post
    [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (1 child)

    Relying on an oppressive walled-garden corp like Cloudflare who sees all traffic is an instant show-stopper for me. If CF is necessary to keep it gratis, then we have to wonder how Cloudfare is profitting. As you say:

    “That, and Cloudflare is itself somewhat of a tracking and analytics company; so you're never going to be really anonymous using this setup.”

    I only read that far. But I have to say getting your own domain should be sufficient because some domain name services include gratis email forwarding. I don’t recall having a limit on the number of aliases but my memory could be off on that.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago

    To be clear, in this case the Cloudflare reverse proxy shenanigans that let them snoop in on traffic are not actually in use (after digging into how it all works, I'm going to add to the warning I have about that specific bit); so as far as I can tell it's mostly safe.
    Could they change their rules and start snooping on emails they route at some point? Yes, and that's indeed a risk with this sort of company.
    But yeah, this is somewhat a compromise; I tried to make it as clear as possible =)

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    • 2 comments in c/privacy@programming.dev view that post
    [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    I suppose if you don't already have your own domain/email hosted on your own *nix box, and you use CF, then I guess this is a workable solution. A lot of geeks have just been doing this the old-fashioned way for decades... so seeing a different way to do it looks quite foreign (and a little bit of "why would you do this") to me :p

    To me the whole point of custom email+domain is to host it yourself and be free from vendor lock-in like this, but I suppose not everyone's usecase is the same.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago

    Yeah, self-hosting is almost always going to be the "ideal" solution for this sort of stuff, but not everyone has the means (knowledge, time, etc.) or even the reliable internet for that to make sense.

    Personally, I know that a few years from now at most, I'll have probably transitioned to something more custom, but I'm guessing this is going to be a more viable solution for a LOT of people.

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