[Big Mac]

Not a good thing:

Originally Posted by ABC News

Major banks and credit-card issuers Capital One, Barclays Bank, U.S. Bancorp and Citigroup have joined the list of companies warning customers that hackers may have learned their email addresses. The companies all use a Dallas-based company called Epsilon to manage their emails to customers. Epsilon said Friday that its system had been breached, exposing email addresses and customer names but no other personal information.

The hackers also gained access to the email addresses of customers of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Best Buy Co., TiVo Inc., Walgreen Co. and Kroger Co.

The affected companies said the email addresses could be used to target "phishing" attacks — seemingly legitimate emails that try to coax account login information from victims. Article link

I can't believe so many high profile companies trusted their most valuable email recipients to a single external point of failure. Very distriburing

[Wiskedjak]

I find it quite easy to believe.

[Atheist]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I can't believe so many high profile companies trusted their most valuable email recipients to a single external point of failure. Very distriburing

Whose to say they wouldn't have done a worse job on their own?

[Big Mac]

At least there wouldn't have been a single point of failure to expose all the lists.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Whats the big deal, Microsoft sold that address to the spammers years ago.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I can't believe so many high profile companies trusted their most valuable email recipients to a single external point of failure. Very distriburing

I got a phishing attack from a Qwest imposter recently.

[turtle777]

I'm glad I'm sticking to my email alias scheme.
I set up a new aliases for every website, usually in the format websitedomain@mydomain.net

As soon as I see some addresses compromised, I can turn that alias off.

-t

[Big Mac]

Perhaps I should adopt that strategy. Seems like a lot of work but at least you know who to blame when an address gets compromised.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Perhaps I should adopt that strategy. Seems like a lot of work but at least you know who to blame when an address gets compromised.

Yeah, I noticed quite a few cases where my unique alias was suddenly used by spammers.

Either company sold the addresses, or they had an undisclosed breach.

-t

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

I'm glad I'm sticking to my email alias scheme.
I set up a new aliases for every website, usually in the format websitedomain@mydomain.net

As soon as I see some addresses compromised, I can turn that alias off.

Sorry, I don't understand how this is done. If I have (for example) "mattyb @ gmail . com" what do I have to do if I subscribe to "www . seloger . com" (for example)? Is this only when you have your own domain?

[Big Mac]

Yeah turtle means having your own domain name.

[-Q-]

It's easiest with your own domain, but Gmail does allow you to set up some "custom" addresses using a "+" and a text string.

Details here: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/...p;answer=12096

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by -Q- 

It's easiest with your own domain, but Gmail does allow you to set up some "custom" addresses using a "+" and a text string.

Details here: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/...p;answer=12096

I'd say it's actually easier with Gmail. If you're using your own domain you actually have to set up the alias. With Gmail you just ad '+whatever' to your normal email address. So if I was signing up for an amazon account I could just use the address 'nonhuman+amazon@gmail.com' to register and it would simply work.

[-Q-]

Originally Posted by nonhuman 

I'd say it's actually easier with Gmail. If you're using your own domain you actually have to set up the alias. With Gmail you just ad '+whatever' to your normal email address. So if I was signing up for an amazon account I could just use the address 'nonhuman+amazon@gmail.com' to register and it would simply work.

You're right; easiest is probably the google method. I probably should have said "more control is offered by having your own domain."

[turtle777]

If you own your own domain, you can define the whole domain as catch-all email..
That means anything sent to *@yourdomain.com will be forwarded to your email account.

You can still hand out site specific email addresses (e.g. acme@yourdomain.com), and if it goes bad, you have to define that alias to go to /dev/null

-t

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I can't believe so many high profile companies trusted their most valuable email recipients to a single external point of failure. Very distriburing

Let me ask you, why are you so surprised by this?