Hello! I am looking for advice on setting up my first custom email domain for my personal use.
I started by purchasing a domain that is not related to my first and last name as I have a very unique first and last and don’t want my email domain to be associated with things like game accounts to where if anyone had my domain they could look me up and find where I live etc…
So, i have my domain and i started by using the free trial of fastmail to connect things, setup a catch all, and started changing emails to things like Amazon@mydomain for example. I then realized after changing a few that this could be a bad idea in terms of privacy and spam even if it’s simple and easy to for my own personal logins and what not.
So before i continue doing that i wanted to ask for opinions on how to set things up. I was thinking maybe i should use something like Addy.io or simplelogin (although I don’t want to pay simplelogin prices). Then I had the idea of just using a few emails such as like game@mydomain for example that I would use for all my video game logins. Not sure if that would be a good idea either.
Overall, I’m just not really sure how I should set things up and would really like suggestions. I am not needing any extreme privacy but I just want to set things up in an efficient and easy to remember manner.
I’ve put a lot of thought lately into my email set-up and things like custom domains. I’ll just give you my current set-up. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with, and I think it’s pretty good.
For reference, I currently use Proton as my email provider:
Custom Domain #1: Under my real name, used only for contacting people. You can set this to whatever you want, a catch-all is probably fine to set, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t have any accounts registered to this and don’t plan to register any.
Custom Domain #2: Used for sensitive accounts that I can’t afford to lose. Anything related to finances, password managers, etc. fall under this umbrella for me. I set this to a catch-all and give each service a different alias (i.e. account1@domain.com, account2@domain.com, etc). This can also be used with SimpleLogin (or just Proton’s built-in alias feature) to email under any of these aliases as necessary.
SimpleLogin: I use SimpleLogin for basically everything else, and I give everything its own unique alias. If you don’t want to go with SimpleLogin, I know DuckDuckGo has a service like this as well with unlimited free aliases. Addy is also a good choice like you said. This is great to prevent spam and cross-site tracking. This would be perfect for things like game accounts in your example. These accounts aren’t anything vital or of crucial importance. (I still follow good practices on them, such as 2FA, unique password, etc). This works great in combination with a password manager.
I really appreciate the response. I do have a few questions though!
I plan on just using a single domain for everything, as a family member has just our @lastname.com so I will set up a personal/professional use ONLY email with that domain. Anyhow, for the majority of my stuff I will use the domain I’m looking at setting up.
You said for everything else you use a 2nd custom domain, and use a separate alias for each service. “(i.e. account1@domain)” are you referring to something like Spotify@domain? (if it were for a Spotify account)? Where you just essentially use the name of whatever website, service as the first part before the domain? I am kind of trying to figure out how I want to separate things and have them listed. I started by doing that such as (Spotify@domain) but I’m just not sure if that’s bad because it makes the login name easily guessable for anything. Although I guess with how I had things setup before with just one email they can pretty much guess my login email for anything anyways.
I think I may just setup things with Addy and then try and use aliases. Do you know, Addy for example is free with unlimited standard aliases & 10 active shared domain aliases what are the differences between standard and “Active shared domain aliases”?
You said for everything else you use a 2nd custom domain, and use a separate alias for each service. “(i.e. account1@domain)” are you referring to something like Spotify@domain? (if it were for a Spotify account)? Where you just essentially use the name of whatever website, service as the first part before the domain? I am kind of trying to figure out how I want to separate things and have them listed. I started by doing that such as (Spotify@domain) but I’m just not sure if that’s bad because it makes the login name easily guessable for anything.
Similar to this, yes. You are correct, that it could be easier for guessing, so you could also add random characters or numbers at the end of the alias. That’s what I would recommend.
Do you know, Addy for example is free with unlimited standard aliases & 10 active shared domain aliases what are the differences between standard and “Active shared domain aliases”?
I looked on their website, and it appears that “standard” aliases all contain your username in the domain (i.e. alias@username.anonaddy.me), while “shared” domain aliases are fully randomized (i.e. alias@anonaddy.me). Shared would definitely be preferred in terms of preventing cross-site tracking.
I have a few more questions based on your response. So I understand it make it pretty easy to guess my logins for things like (spotify@mydomain) and I do think doing something like Spotify184734@mydomain would help with that but I guess my only concern is that i wouldn’t ever be able to remember or keep track of logins with randomized numbers after.
Thank you for the help and clarification with that I wasn’t quite understanding the difference.
One concern with using something like anonaddy or simplelogin (if I’m understanding it correctly) is that if I setup with those services I do have more privacy but I’m also then becoming reliant on their service right? Meaning that if i stop using their service or it shuts down I won’t have access to any of the aliases I setup and will have to go through and change emails for things or just lose access to accounts. Again I’m not sure if I’m understanding that correctly.
If I am understanding those services correctly then I’m kind of thinking of just trying to find an email host where I can setup multiple aliases and create one for each service rather than a catch all to where I could get spam etc…
Ok awesome, thanks for helping answer my questions and the feedback.
It seems like everything has its tradeoffs. I will have to plan out how I want to set things up. I might use a combination of the two. Aliases with anonaddy for stuff I don’t want to have my domain and use my actual domain for more important things.
How did you determine what you wanted to keep separate or what was considered important vs not?
How did you determine what you wanted to keep separate or what was considered important vs not?
Mainly things financial related, password manager, etc. Basically things where I’m fucked if I lose access. It’s subjective and depends on what’s important to you.