

Did You Know All Your Emails Were In One Basket? - srikar
http://blog.louisgray.com/2011/04/did-you-know-all-your-emails-were-in.html

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dangrossman
It doesn't make sense for these companies to run their own e-mail marketing.
Sending legitimate bulk mail is massively complicated, and requires a whole
department of people to maintain personal relationships with individuals at
all the major ISPs and webmail services (Gmail, Hotmail, etc). That's the only
way to get reasonable deliverability of the mail, as every mailing they do
results in tens of thousands of false spam reports, triggers all kinds of
throttles on the receiving servers, etc. On a daily basis, the mailer needs to
do cleanup, getting its mail servers removed from automated blacklists and
adjusting for major recipients' throttling and other rules.

The only way to handle all that affordably is to outsource it to a company
whose full-time job is to manage all that complexity. Everyone bringing it in-
house would not be practical, not just because it's expensive but because
there would be too many people trying to interact with the
ISPs/webmail/blacklist people every day.

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iuguy
I use my domains very specifically as far as email is concerned. Some years
ago I registered a domain for registering for shopping, online accounts etc.
and created a catch-all address, so I could sign up with slord-
news.ycombinator.com@<domain> and I'd know if it had been leaked as the
address would start getting mail from elsewhere.

I don't publish the domain anywhere online (hence <domain>) earlier, I also
did this after I signed up for HN, but you get the point.

~~~
allwein
I follow the exact same protocol.

This also makes it extremely simple to successfully sort and filter my email.
I maintain Inbox Zero for my personal email folder and any
ImportantClient@mydomain.com folders. And then once a week I'll go through the
lower priority folders and process them.

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AgentConundrum
The alternative to one large basket run by people whose core competency is,
most likely, managing this sort of thing specifically would be many, many
smaller baskets run by people who may or may not have the slightest clue what
they're doing.

Think of all the sites you've seen that store your passwords in plain text.
Hell, PlentyOfFish sends (or did in the past) weekly emails with your password
in them. Think of how horribly wrong these companies are getting really basic
things. Now, do you want to trust them _all_ to do everything properly, or do
you want that responsibility delegated to someone who'll do it right?

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mmcconnell1618
Unfortunately, security through obscurity isn't going to work. Someone will
always find a way to grab large collections of email addresses. We need a
better solution to help verify senders and highlight fake content/links.

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EwanToo
If only they were 'just' all in one secure basket, instead they're all
duplicated in dozens of very large baskets with dubious levels of security and
varying levels of attached personal information.

