We control the confidentiality of your email address and put in order incoming mail.
50 years after its creation, email remains the main identifier for Internet users. Rarely what site does not require it for registration, in almost every application form (survey, for work, etc.) there is a graph for email. But effective protection technologies for its confidentiality have not been developed. You do not shine your residential address anywhere, so why an e-mail address should be an exception? The damage from his falling into the hands of fraudsters can also be very high.
There is an acute problem of a large number of letters. Many articles have been written on how to organize incoming / outgoing email correspondence; email providers periodically release automated solutions. But the main problems of email remain unresolved:
- An abundance of spam and junk. By garbage, I mean a variety of mailing from the services where you register, and their "partners".
- The inability to automatically set priorities for incoming correspondence. Any message, regardless of its importance, whether it is an advertisement for a new product or an urgent letter from a business partner, will be displayed as a new message.
- The inability to control the spread of your email address. Like any other information, the e-mail address is fairly easily distributed throughout the network and it is extremely difficult to prevent this.
- Potential safety hazard. When hacking email, an attacker can gain access to all sites on which you are registered through it.
I will share my original solution. In any case, I did not see a description of this approach on the Internet, so I am inclined to believe that I came up with it first. I will say in advance that this solution is not free, but cheap.
')
The solution is based on the idea of not giving anyone a real e-mail address , but at the same time retaining the opportunity to receive messages from everyone to whom the address was given. It is logical that if no one knows your real address, then hacking it is extremely difficult.
For implementation, email is used in its own domain and mail aliases (pseudonyms).
Mail address alias is the email address to send. If, for example, the user has the address user@example.com, and he needs the address info@example.com, then this address can be made alias to the main one, and all incoming mail will be collected in one mailbox.
- Wikipedia
Instead of a real email address, we give everyone unique aliases. All the letters will come to the real address, and the “To” field will be able to track who / where / when the specific alias was issued.
Implementation
First you need to create email in your own domain. You will need to buy a domain if you do not already have one, and either set up your own mail server or use the services of some provider. I prefer Yandex.Mail for domain . Google has the same service, though not free.
Register 3 electronic mailboxes:
- for personal correspondence;
- for registrations on sites;
- for the rest of the mail (I call it public).
We keep the first electronic box as the apple of an eye, giving only trusted contacts . It is used only for personal correspondence with real people. The second is used for registration on different sites and applications, and the third - for all other cases. This approach will allow to divide email already into categories. In the first there will be letters only from people, in the second - mostly notifications, in the third - potential junk and spam.
But you can go even further and get almost complete control over incoming correspondence. For this we need aliases.
First you need to set up e-mail on your domain so that all the letters sent to the non-existent postal address of the domain are collected in a public mailbox. In Yandex.Mail for Domain, this is a regular feature that is included in the settings. Then, for the public mailbox, all possible addresses that are not aliases or logins of other mailboxes in this domain will become aliases.
Now, when we need to give someone your email address, you can specify absolutely any login that we will invent at that moment (for example, newlogin@mydomain.ru ), and all messages sent to this address will be accumulated in a public mailbox.
In the future, you can transfer messages sent to the address newlogin@mydomain.ru in a box for personal correspondence or a box for registration, simply specifying newlogin as an alias for one of these boxes. Or you can completely block messages sent to this address using rules (filters).
Application
Now when registering, I use a unique e-mail for each site of the form [site_address] @ mydomain.ru . The first time confirming the registration of the email comes in a public box, from where I confirm it. Then, when there is time, I create an alias to the registration box for each site and notifications from it begin to fall into this box.
With a variety of questionnaires, I do more interesting. For example, if a beautiful girl asks to fill out a form for receiving a discount card, then the girl would not want to refuse, and it would be nice to get a discount, and she is afraid for the address. Then I can specify something like for_beautiful_girl_250415@mydomain.ru . Or make any other address where I can identify with sufficient accuracy to whom I gave it.
And if spam is sent to any of the addresses, I will be able to determine by the “To” field which site has allowed the leak and block the letters arriving at this address by creating a corresponding rule. And, of course, you can send an angry letter to those who have leaked the address to spammers.
By the way, aliases can also be created for a personal address, for example, aliases for work, school, etc. correspondence. Yandex.Mail for Domain allows you to send emails from aliases attached, so you can be safe and always use the alias for any correspondence, so no one will ever know your real login by which you can log into the box.
I also began to check my email box less often. I used to react to every new letter (in the sense I looked through when I noticed). Now every day I look through only my personal, less often - the registration one, even less often - a public mail box.
And what if your box is still hacked?
Too no trouble! You have a domain control panel where you can unhook the box and the hacker will not receive a single letter to them, and is unlikely to be able to enter it. Also, if you use a mail provider for a domain, such as Yandex or Google, you can solve the problem with burglary by logging into the account through which you registered domain mail.
In the end, we have 3 different mailboxes with different logins and passwords. Therefore, if you hacked, for example, publicly, then this will not affect the other two boxes and you will be able to use them as before, all correspondence in them will also be intact. We do not put all the eggs in one basket, as they say.
As you can see, the security of an electronic box in its own domain is increased many times as compared to a regular box in the provider's domain.
Advantages and disadvantages
Pros:
- Sort e-mail by type of correspondence (personal, notification, the rest).
- The ability to block incoming mail to the address to which the spam went, without prejudice to the main mailbox.
- The ability to track where the sender received your address.
- Your mailbox is much harder to crack without knowing its real login, only an alias.
- If the address base leaks from a certain site, it doesn't matter to you.
- An email address in your own domain is awesome.
Minuses:
- It is not free. But it is worth the money spent. Personally, I spend only about 500 rubles per year per domain. “Yandex.Mail for Domain” is free and completely suits me.
- Need to check multiple mailboxes.
- Mail programs cannot send mail from aliases. It is necessary to use the web interface of the provider.
Obviously, the pros outweigh the cons. I hope that my article will be useful and will help you improve the efficiency of working with e-mail, as well as save it from dangers.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/356798/
All Articles