the spam solution i can't use

I decided to regex everything to keep my email inbox clear of spam, but I have looked into other options.

There is one and only one way that is absolutely guaranteed way to stop all spam, and it's on-the-fly email aliasing.

What this basically means is that everybody, be it a person or business, gets a separate alias address to email you with. With on-the-fly aliasing, you can create an alias whenever you want and immediately start using it. Also, if any alias starts getting spammed, you can delete the alias, make up another one, and that spam problem is solved instantly.

But there are three huge problems with this, even though it absolutely does work to stop spam.

First, with an alias service, you're putting trust and faith that the service won't be blocked anywhere or suddenly close shop. Doesn't matter if it's Firefox Relay, addy.io or any of the others. Just because they work now doesn't mean they won't in the future.

Second, using aliases can turn into a management mess in short order.

With the existing web/email hosting setup I have, I could, if I wanted to, configure on-the-fly email aliases. The nerdy technical details of it is that I would set one master address as a catch-all such as me@example.net, and then use some regex magic so me[anything]@example.net would deliver email to me@example.net. Also, I can send mail for any alias I make, so if I had mesocialmedia@example.net, I can send as that address. And should any alias get spammed, I can filter it right out with regex and create another alias on-the-fly instantly. Not a problem... except it is. More on that in a moment.

Is this the same as plus addressing? Pretty much, except my aliases would work anywhere since some sites don't allow email addresses with a plus in them. Social media is a good example. Some social media sites would allow me+socialmedia@example.net while others would spit back an error on attempt to use that for an account email address.

Even with "100% compatible" addresses, micromanaging is a very real thing when using email aliases. Yeah, you're still using just one email account since all the aliases deliver email there, but now you have to keep track of all the aliases being used.

Setting up aliasing is easy, but switching over every account to a separate alias is the very tedious, very annoying part.

If I have an account at Big Ass Bank using me@example.net and want to change that to mebank@example.net, I have to login and do the song and dance of changing the email address, get the verification email, confirm, and okay, then I can use it.

But then I have to do the same thing for every frickin' account I have. Not quick. That could take the better part of a week to get all that done.

For giving out email addresses in person, I'd have to carry around a field notes wallet. On one of the pages I'd have a few short words written down for email alias use (sky, cloud, sun, moon, star, etc.), then cross one out whenever it gets used. True, field notes wallets are cool and damned handy for having a right-now way of jotting down a note wherever I am. But for email alias management, it's a little ridiculous to use a notepad to help manage it all. (Then again, if you consider it a good idea, go for it.)

Any why do the aliases have to be managed like that? It's so I don't accidentally use one twice, because if I did, and the alias starts getting spammed later, two people or two accounts are affected if I delete it. I'm not going to remember which two they were, so to avoid that trap, every alias has to be for just one account or one person.

Third, dealing with The Email Cabal isn't fun. At all.

The Email Cabal are those "free" email providers that start with G, H, O or Y. You know what those are. And they don't like it when people send messages using aliases even when all the checks and balances are "OK". The alias service could be free of all blacklists, have proper SPF/DKIM/DMARC/whatever configured and whatever, but it doesn't matter. You try to send any message using an email alias to a cabal-run email address, and it could be false-flagged as spam at any time.

Oh sure, you can receive emails all day, but sending to any email address run by the cabal is a totally different story. Not only do you have to worry about whether the alias service will stay up and running, but also worry about whether the cabal is "in a mood" that week or not. Ridiculous.

100% effective to stop spam, but...

Let's say you have no intention of sending mail as an aliased address and just want to receive. Let's also say you're relatively confident that the company who runs the alias service won't screw you over. Okay, fine.

There's still that whole micromanaging thing going on that cannot be avoided. Every time you use an alias, that's effectively adding another email address into your life that you have to keep track of.

Ultimately, just the thought of micromanaging email steered me away from using email address aliases.

Is aliasing worthless?

No.

Aliasing doesn't work for me, but I understand people like having a handful of "throwaway" email addresses that they can use whenever they want to receive newsletters or whatever. As long as it's just a few addresses, that's manageable. And by a few, I mean fewer than 10. Going anywhere beyond that into double digit territory is where the micromanaging creeps in, and that would be bad.

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Published 2026 Feb 9