Email Addresses - Confused!

that

Proton mail is relatively new, encrypt everything. Swiss. They are/were free unless sending an receiving large amounts of mail, you could try them and they do not spy on you, or own your mail after two years

steviebabes

I've had a GMX email for a couple of years now. No problems and I got my full name without numbers.

Heedtheadvice

....and I use Mailfence rather than common ones like gmail etc. No issue using my name (or at least something like it that I wished! - would never use full name or digits relating to birthdays etcetera...) without numbers. Free too in simplest form.....

pamsdish

I used my initials, maiden name, and first marriage so ended up with 5 letters then my year of birth.

dan958

I use my own domain just for longevity sake. It isn't uncommon for free email services to stop running (especially ISP run ones), if you lose your address, you have to go through the annoyance of changing everything important that went to that address.

With your own domain, if your email provider went down, you can just move it to another provider and keep the exact same address. (make sure you backup old emails all the time)

victor2

Your own domain is a good way to go. Costs you the annual registration plus whatever hosting you choose to go with it. But it isn't then tied to any ISP. Finding a domain name that is available is almost as difficult as finding a new name for a gmail account!
You want something that is easy to remember and say, and is not ambiguous with the spelling. Forget any single words, they'll already be registered.
One advantage I make use of with my own domain is that I can have multiple email accounts, so I can set up an account specific to a particular "project", without giving away my private address. The other advantage is that I can have unlimited email forwarders, where any address such as [EMAIL="mse@mydomain.co.uk"]mse@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL] will deliver to my real address on mydomain.co.uk. Handy if you have to register your email address with a website, but you don't trust them to keep it confidential. If you start getting spam to that address, you just delete the forwarder.

Terrysdelight

victor2 wrote: »

Your own domain is a good way to go. Costs you the annual registration plus whatever hosting you choose to go with it. But it isn't then tied to any ISP. Finding a domain name that is available is almost as difficult as finding a new name for a gmail account!
You want something that is easy to remember and say, and is not ambiguous with the spelling. Forget any single words, they'll already be registered.
One advantage I make use of with my own domain is that I can have multiple email accounts, so I can set up an account specific to a particular "project", without giving away my private address. The other advantage is that I can have unlimited email forwarders, where any address such as [EMAIL="mse@mydomain.co.uk"]mse@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL] will deliver to my real address on mydomain.co.uk. Handy if you have to register your email address with a website, but you don't trust them to keep it confidential. If you start getting spam to that address, you just delete the forwarder.

Thanks. I like the sound of this.

Uxb1

Is sometime a better idea to have an obscure email.
You may rest assured that the spammers giga-sized databases have every common name in it.
So if you have [EMAIL="john.smith@xxx.com"]john.smith@xxx.com[/EMAIL] you will be deluged with spam
However if you have an email such as [EMAIL="john34.smith_pz34t@xxx.com"]john34.smith_pz34t@xxx.com[/EMAIL] then you are far less to get the crap being generated by auto-spammers sending out millions.

As other have said the other advantage of your own domain is that you can have multiple addresses and alias under the same main address.
So if you own acb112.com you can have [EMAIL="peter@abc112.com"]peter@abc112.com[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="jane@acb112.com"]jane@acb112.com[/EMAIL] and so on up to the limit the supplier/domain hosting service of the address allows.
This multiple address thing can be used for security.
For example I have a long random/complicated email address which is only ever given out to banks and other finance groups.
It has never had any spam in it compared with my usual email address.
So when I get a message coming in to my finance related address I know to look at it and its going to be 100% genuine - while when I get the usual load of phishing and other stuff coming into my main address all claiming to be paypal, natwest and the rest I KNOW that it is spammers.

donnajunkie

Colin_Maybe wrote: »

At work there's a worrying number of people who use their name and date of birth as their email address which seems misguided to me. It wouldn't take much for someone to create software to strip both out and they've now got your name and DOB to go phishing for more info on you.

Yes that sounds paranoid but someone will be doing it and yes, people will fall for it. Why make it easy for them?

Perhaps, year of birth was just an idea, it could be any number relevant in some way so its easy to remember and less annoying like having random numbers can be for some.

G_M

that wrote: »

Proton mail is relatively new, encrypt everything. Swiss. They are/were free unless sending an receiving large amounts of mail, you could try them and they do not spy on you, or own your mail after two years

Had a look at Proton.They say

End-to-End Encryption

Messages are encrypted at all times

, but this only seems to apply to emails between Proton users with the free version.


The 'Plus' version adds:
"Send encrypted messages to external recipients" so that headline claim seems misplaced.