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Lord_Jello_III t1_j5tan2j wrote

The irony here is when I went to try to read the article... It asked for my email address. I thought twice, and didn't read the article.

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_casshern_ t1_j5tbing wrote

Use email aliases! iCloud, simplelogin, etc. Never give your real email address to anyone!

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cesiuum t1_j5tc2j6 wrote

Compartmentalize and use alias if possible.

Saved me the trouble from identifying which services abused my e-mail and kept spamming me.

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Golden_Lynel t1_j5td2pe wrote

This is why i have a dedicated junkmail address lmao

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jkirk57 t1_j5td2s4 wrote

establish 2 emails addresses. 1 for business and 1 for risk. Has worked well for me.

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RelevantWindow9051 t1_j5tdn9i wrote

interesting article on the topic of email address and digital tracking. providesoverview of current state of email tracking and its implications on privacy

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MrSquigles t1_j5tefs0 wrote

Why, though? I can't read the article without giving them my email.

Edit: This wasn't a joke, I actually want to know their reasoning.

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Svvatzenegger t1_j5tfmdz wrote

Paywalled article about not sharing details. Gold star.

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aquarain t1_j5tgage wrote

Everyone already has all your email addresses. You can download them on the 7 seas by the gigabyte. Which is a lot since a gigabyte is 1073741824 bytes and compressed the average email address is about 8 bytes.

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Trollercoaster101 t1_j5tldlz wrote

Make it a habit of using email hiding services like anonaddy or duckduckgo email. The older your mail account is more likely you are to end up in some data leak somewhere.

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3ntr0py_ t1_j5tnx6i wrote

Apple hide my email to the rescue.

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SunBearxx t1_j5tp1or wrote

Yep. This is why whenever I’m checking out and the cashier asks for my email to enter into the system, I always politely decline. “I’d rather not” usually does the trick.

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evolving_I t1_j5tqf10 wrote

Congratulations, you've won! We'll be opening the door to your cell momentarily, but it'll only remain open for a few seconds! We recommend you use that time to make a quick escape! Thanks for using Invisi-prison, your solution for incarcerating the ignorant! Y'all come back, now!

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projektstronpl t1_j5tu1hi wrote

One email for "serious" usage like directly email messages and one for registering on the pages. It let you avoid spam in the first one.

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TSnowCrash t1_j5tuia4 wrote

setup a dummy account used just to signup for stuff.

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shinra528 t1_j5tvkdm wrote

I had the shocking revelation recently that a shit ton of people actually don't know how much they are being tracked or the extent that shadow profiles are being built on them.

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AgeRelatedConfusion t1_j5tw4in wrote

Really? So you're saying I shouldn't just hand out my info freely?

Gosh! What a cutting edge concept! NYTimes is really onto something here.

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VincentNacon t1_j5twol4 wrote

Quite late to the party, aren't we?

Like... 20+ years late.

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LittleBitOdd t1_j5tylk0 wrote

The card/gift retailer Moonpig is currently doing user research into whether people who have been sent a gift (the recipient, not the purchaser) will give Moonpig their email address so that they can track the parcel. The prototype I saw had the recipient get a text message saying that they were getting a gift. It provided a tracking link, and then demanded the recipient's email address just to see when the gift would be delivered.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it became the norm in the future

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basec0m t1_j5tyyxf wrote

I've kept my old netscape address for this purpose.

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FatStupidOldMan t1_j5tzs3y wrote

I have a junk email, that literally serves the purpose for signups.

I also have another email that used for things that matter and that one is only ever used when working with official entities.

Then I have a “social media” email that’s just used for shit like twitch and reddit.

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evolving_I t1_j5u1kgb wrote

The need to read the article is the prison, and we're all ignorant of it and thus ensnared. By using the given advice, OP was able to bypass the prison's game-loop and won themselves a chance at escape, if they can find the exit before it closes again.

I'll see myself out.

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tdogg241 t1_j5u2ytk wrote

Joke's on you, my email is pretty much a spam repository now.

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forahellofafit t1_j5u3fxo wrote

I've had to abandon e-mail addresses due to making this mistake. Once you get on enough lists, you'll get hundreds of ads a day.

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beartato327 t1_j5u56zd wrote

Use one time email burner services like yopmail

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Apprentice-Cucumber t1_j5u6dhv wrote

I have a dedicated junkmail domain, that way each site can have their own unique email address. It makes for easier blocking and also it makes it easier to see what sites/companies sell your email address or get hacked.

I used to have a dedicated junkmail-address and used the "+" and the website/company for similar purposes as above, but I notice many companies tend to strip the "+"-bit nowadays.

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Plawerth t1_j5u73b1 wrote

I used my real name and current gmail email address on USENET about in 2005.

I forward emails from an old email account that I used on USENET back around 1995.

My real name and current email address appears on a bunch of Wikipedia articles and on digital media that I uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons.

Do not ever do this. Oops too late.

I get the most ridiculous amounts of spam. Google gets a hell of a workout from me, lol.

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GhostReddit t1_j5u7whw wrote

That train has left the station, my email is 95% annoying spam already to the point that third party email clients aren't usable because only gmail will categorize all that spam and garbage.

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tads73 t1_j5u9bte wrote

This is why I love my trusty 25 year old AOL email address.

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Orpheus_is_emo t1_j5u9h13 wrote

I got hit with the “sign in with your email to read the article” paywall. As an email marketer, this is the funniest thing to happen to me today. I’ve already shared it with my coworkers.

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VapidRapidRabbit t1_j5u9sxc wrote

Well, Apple has this neat “Hide My Email” feature. That, along with the “Sign In with Apple” feature are great for privacy.

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mcotter12 t1_j5uaisd wrote

Word. Nancy pelosi is blowing up my Gmail

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shinra528 t1_j5uay6q wrote

I think a lot of people don't care about it don't realize just how vast it is. I've had a few arguments with people who were convinced that Facebook and Google were not tracking them because they didn't use their services.

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Myte342 t1_j5ubjnr wrote

I have a multitude of email addresses that are made for specific purposes. I have a personal email address that only goes out to friends and family and never signs up for anything. I have an official email address for any government related services and never signs up for anything not a government website. I have another one just for gaming and only signs up for gaming related accounts. I have another one just for my bank and only my bank and my email service knows it exists. I have another one for useless fluff stuff, where I don't care about it and it's not synced anywhere but I need to have an email account like pizza restaurant website or something. Then I have the truly fluff account that I hand out to anyone who's asking but I really don't care about their services at all. Need an email address for me to sign up for your store membership card? You get the junk email address.

Compartmentalizing my emails has been a godsend. For the most part it's been near 20 years since I started this and the various mailboxes arely ever get any junk mail except for the two accounts that are specifically designed for junk services... But I don't have them synced to any accounts to constantly pester me with junk mail and no one that I care about knows that they exist so I never have to look at them to try to find important emails anyhow.

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Myte342 t1_j5uc9bp wrote

I don't know if this is still accurate but for a long while Gmail was set up so that you could have name@gmail as your regular email and then do a "dot alias" to identify where the email came from. So Name.FoodLion@gmail would still deliver to your regular email address but it would show the dot designation. So now when food Lion sells your data to some other company and you start getting non food lion emails using that Food Lion address you know who sold your data.

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Ascian5 t1_j5ue5zx wrote

My uncle own an internet domain and just makes new unique email addresses for when he's forced to give one. He's had some interesting conversations catching local businesses, etc who say they don't give or sell your info away.

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TheChucklesStart t1_j5uh0zb wrote

Most likely because an e-mail allows them to track you, but since it has also been provided to others, it allows for correlation of data to get a more complete picture of who you are. A much more comprehensive picture than you would be comfortable giving to any one organization.

Right now, things that are used for this that I have observed are: phone numbers, email addresses, credit card numbers (scraped when you purchase something), social media accounts, misc web browsing trackers. I wouldn’t be surprised if your phone’s wifi and bluetooth identifiers are also used to track you in large chains or malls.

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Lumiafan t1_j5uhjhv wrote

What's even more ironic is The New York Times wants your email address, in part, because they want to use it for advertising practices exposed in this article.

In the advertising world, "leverage first-party data" (i.e., use people's email addresses and other contact info) is a phrase that has been repeated to the point of cliche when talking about how to adapt to the end of the third-party cookie. NYT and all these other sites work with ad exchanges that rely on their signed-in user base to target audiences.

Working in advertising, I don't think it's ever really used for anything nefarious, but I understand why people think it's shady.

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Efficient-Unit-6440 t1_j5uhkop wrote

My hairdresser asked for my email address. Told her to cut it out. But seriously. I’m not giving my email address to a state run covert ops group that’s infiltrated “just cuts” to get email addresses. Cut it out.

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Lumiafan t1_j5ui5c9 wrote

Not for nothing, but Facebook and Google tracking practices are a moot point in the United States. Since 2017, it's been legal for ISPs to sell browsing data in the U.S. (other developed countries rightly prohibit that), so all of their browsing privacy is gone even before they ever get picked up by a Google or Facebook tracking pixel.

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Lumiafan t1_j5uifgi wrote

I know this is sarcasm, but I do want to make an important distinction: This type of privacy issue doesn't really relate to governmental use. If the government wanted your browsing history and internet activity, they wouldn't really have to go through publishers and data providers.

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Lumiafan t1_j5uisth wrote

That's not the point here. If your junkmail address is linked to other addresses or data points in an identity graph, advertisers/data providers will still be able to pool you accordingly. The vast majority of this has little to do with bad actors trying to invade your privacy to spy on you; rather, it's about whether or not your presence on these sites can be monetized in some way.

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shinra528 t1_j5uiy9g wrote

Yes, very true but the arguments I had were specific to Google and Facebook’s practices and that wasn’t within the scope of the conversations. That’s a really good point to bring up though.

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Lumiafan t1_j5uj0to wrote

It's very likely that, if they are not already, some (if not all) those email addresses will be unified under a singular identifier in some sort of identity graph that is being used for advertising targeting and attribution.

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Content_Date_318 t1_j5ujwq2 wrote

jokes on you idiots, I don't even check my own email address.

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thisischemistry t1_j5umoxr wrote

I'm loving Apple's Hide My Email to make a unique email for each company:

> Hide My Email generates unique, random email addresses that automatically forward to your personal inbox. Each address is unique to you. You can read and respond directly to emails sent to these addresses and your personal email address is kept private.

It's very easy to create a unique email and know if the company sells it because then it will start being used by other companies. I can then filter or abandon that email address and not have my main email address affected.

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cleaning_my_room_ t1_j5uqd48 wrote

I have my own domain set up with an email wildcard so any address followed by @mydomain.net (not my real domain) goes to my inbox. I set up a new address for every website or email list.

I also have email rules to automatically put email in folders or delete it based on what address they send to (or from).

So not only can I see when my address was leaked or sold, I can easily filter it out when it happens.

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hayden_evans t1_j5us1ce wrote

This is why I think Hide My Email is one of Apple’s most underrated features of iCloud.

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Silencer306 t1_j5usgtq wrote

The only problem I have is that, gmail app on iOS doesn’t give a notification when an email is received on hide my email address and you need to set up rules so that it doesn’t go to spam

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Burntsoft t1_j5utpl5 wrote

I constantly have been thinking about a better solution to email providers. Why are we handing them an address anyone can send anything to.

Why haven't we considered a different path that puts the control of what the user wants to see in their own hands.

Why am I unable to provide a unique key or a cryptographic solution to a provider and I am essentially 'adding' them to allow them to send me information about their produce or my account.

Once the unique key or solution becomes compromised I can simply toss out the key associated with my main email manager and move on with my life without getting every piece of shitware junk mail.

Drives me fucking mad.

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BobBelcher2021 t1_j5v40nf wrote

I never give out my email address unless it’s absolutely necessary. My phone number as well.

I stopped shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond because of how pushy they were for me to give that info out. That info was not necessary for me to compete the purchase. Now they’ve lost a customer that would’ve had a high lifetime CV which has shifted to one of their competitors instead.

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deeannbee t1_j5v5zxa wrote

I don’t know the technical explanation, but it’s kind of like the reader view “converts” the article before the paywall downloads. It works about 95% of the time for me.

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AppliedTechStuff t1_j5vlgoh wrote

Very similar here...

Basic stuff...

Basic stuff 2 (when Basic 1 got too busy)

Business 1 (for VITAL business stuff--like data feeds and subscriptions)

Business 2 (for business websites like LinkedIn, WSJ, etc.)

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CondescendingShitbag t1_j5vr4z6 wrote

>If the government wanted your browsing history and internet activity, they wouldn't really have to go through publishers and data providers.

Sure, but they technically need warrants for official data requests. But why bother with warrants when they have been known to simply buy personal data as a 4th Amendment loophole.

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Bitter-Inspection136 t1_j5vsrsr wrote

That's why Gmail accounts are free and you make 10 of them. A few are for signups and spam. And you get 15gb of cloud for free on each

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Bitter-Inspection136 t1_j5vu1ps wrote

Yes, my parents, and guess who gets to listen to them complain about spam mail and then go in and clean up the mess. When I suggest doing things like this they say "Don't make it complicated. I don't like complicated!" I'm like, "Complicated is me having to clean up your email mess!"

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Puzzleheaded-Ease-14 t1_j5vw7i7 wrote

do people just not have a “spam email account” for all this kind of stuff. like I don’t even check it.

email for financial & utilities account stuff email for personal stuff email for work/school stuff email for spam, rewards cards, websites email for online accounts & logins

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EarlPartridgesGhost t1_j5vxuxc wrote

But make sure you share it with NYTimes so they can resolve your online identity and share with ad partners.

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voidsrus t1_j5vym8l wrote

i use gmail's "+" and the merchant's name to segment out who's abusing/selling my email address. for sites that don't accept that, i have a "spam@" alias. for companies who won't accept that, i have "crap@". both of those two go directly to spam folder.

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TrueGlich t1_j5w0b1v wrote

This is why i use simplelogin i have 100s of emails address one for each company i deal with no two companies have same email for me.

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thisischemistry t1_j5w27ie wrote

Your ISP can do the same thing, the sites you visit can do the same thing. At some point your data is vulnerable, the only true way to be safe is to be a luddite and not generate any data at all.

Stuff like Hide My Email is there so you can have some measure of control over who sends you email and it works well for that.

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Stuck_at_Work_Till_5 t1_j5w7srj wrote

I created a SPAM email address decades ago. Its still going strong for any random sign-ups.

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ineedabuttrub t1_j5wefxv wrote

You said

>The vast majority of this has little to do with bad actors trying to invade your privacy to spy on you; rather, it's about whether or not your presence on these sites can be monetized in some way.

So the vast majority of concerns should be mitigated by an adblocker, according to you.

And if you're that worried about privacy, use a new email for everything you sign up to. With password managers like Bitwarden there's no worry of forgetting passwords, or remembering which password goes with which account.

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rhinosyphilis t1_j5wfy9b wrote

The edits on that article say that they upped iterations to 350k. I heard on my fav security podcast that it was 600k (show notes aren’t posted yet, when they are I’ll update this with their reference). If you’re self hosting though your vault is on your own servers.

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jonasjlp t1_j5wgxyo wrote

That's what your yahoo email address is for.

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FalseTebibyte t1_j5woxnu wrote

The actual answer is that privacy is an illusion. The large corporations have known this for a while, and it's all a song and dance until the entire house of cards comes toppling down. Edited to add that my details are smeared all over the internet on purpose. Someone's gotta start the fight somehow.

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IgottaPee777 t1_j5wrjxx wrote

It’s not that big a deal to find somebody’s email address. This is not really a thing.

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ChalupaCabre t1_j5wwd7j wrote

Everyone should have a throw away email or use one of those email anonymizer like built into Apple.

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Puzzleheaded-Cod4909 t1_j5xum67 wrote

Never share any personal data unless absolutely required to. Never install any app on your phone for convenience as that's the best way to source your data. Turn off all request permissions in your browsers, you don't need to supply that data to anyone.

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5225225 t1_j60gvos wrote

That, and if you have encrypted DNS and the server you're connecting to uses Encrypted Client Hello (https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypted-client-hello/), the domain name is hidden too.

It doesn't help if only one site is behind an IP address, but it does help if you're connecting to a share host where many sites can be behind a single IP, your ISP will have a harder time figuring out which site you're visiting.

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interdatalink t1_j66dhua wrote

This post was a great reminder about the importance of protecting our personal information online. Email addresses are often used to create accounts, and it is important to think twice before sharing it with anyone.

We should be aware of how our email address may be used by others, and take the necessary steps to protect our personal information. Thanks for this post! Nice share:
https://interdatalink.com/the-importance-of-technology-in-spotting-security-risks/

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