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9 votes
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How to deal with a stupid email situation?
My spouse and I own a condo. The property management company that the home owners' association hired is generally mediocre (which is a huge step up from the usual scenario where most are actively...
My spouse and I own a condo. The property management company that the home owners' association hired is generally mediocre (which is a huge step up from the usual scenario where most are actively awful). They do a reasonably good job of keeping us informed, but they way they do it is hilariously bad. Every email they send is sent as a .jpg and a .docx file with no actual text in the message. My email client renders it and I can read it, but it makes all of their emails unsearchable, and it makes filtering beyond the basic "emails containing address x" impossible.
I've asked them personally several times both electronically and in writing to please stop sending such correspondence and just send a regular email. (I honestly don't care whether it's plain text or HTML, just so long as it's searchable and filterable.) But it's so far been to no avail. I brought it up at the last HOA meeting and they agreed to also include their messages as text in the body of the email, but they don't. If I'm really lucky they'll have one or two sentences in text, but the rest is a .jpg and a .docx (or .pdf) of the actual body of the message. I've tried to explain that this is bad for people with disabilities and may even run afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but they didn't seem to care.
It's not clear to me how one ends up sending emails in this form. I don't use any Microsoft products, which they probably can't comprehend, but I suspect this is some sort of Windows thing. Does anyone know how this happens and why? And more importantly, does anyone have suggestions for getting them to stop?
14 votes -
Email: How about doing it right?
In light of the seemingly increasing rate of data breaches and privacy violations in general, I've decided to take some steps further regarding my online presence. Among other things, I decided to...
In light of the seemingly increasing rate of data breaches and privacy violations in general, I've decided to take some steps further regarding my online presence.
Among other things, I decided to switch all my online accounts to custom domain email addresses, so I grabbed two domain names (with WhoisGuard enabled): one for use with stuff related to my real identity (think
@firstlast.com
), and the other for all else (think@randomword.com
). Then, I changed the email address of each one of my existing online accounts, taking advantage of the catch-all feature. To make things short, it goes like this:Accounts not related to my real identity:
tildes.net.187462@randomword.com
-> tildes.netreddit.com.178334@randomword.com
-> reddit.com- ...
Accounts related to my real identity:
amazon.com.113908@firstlast.com
-> amazon.combankofamerica.com.175512@firstlast.com
-> bankofamerica.com- ...
As you might have guessed, the 6 digits ending the local part of email addresses are meant to be randomly generated, in order to mitigate easy guesses by spammers due to catch-all (though I've also created a specific sieve filter to mark incoming emails with "unknown" recipient as spam).
Before you ask, I don't intend to start a discussion about threat modelling here. I just want—as anyone who is not a complete tech-illiterate—to have a reasonable weapon against spam caused by recurrent data breaches, so that if an email address is leaked, I can toss it and replace it with a new one without much effort.
Also, I value owning my email addresses, in the sense that if I decide to change email provider in the future, I won't have to change my addresses too as a consequence. For communicating with real humans (e.g., my doctor), I could use a non catch-all address like
first@firstlast.com
.I wonder what do you think of this approach... Is it overkill? Do you see any major concern from a privacy or security standpoint? Are you doing something similar and are happy with it? I would very much like to hear your experiences with email, especially about the approach you settled with.
18 votes -
What do you use for email?
I've recently decided to change email providers and so I had to change quite a few things. I went from encrypted mail (Tutanota) with their own client to a plain mail / standards-compliant mail...
I've recently decided to change email providers and so I had to change quite a few things. I went from encrypted mail (Tutanota) with their own client to a plain mail / standards-compliant mail provider (Migadu) after looking at many providers. (I'll probably make a blog post about it in the near future.)
So I'm just wondering.
What email provider do you use?
What clients do you use?
How do you treat your email?
Anything else you want to share in relation with this?37 votes -
Email accounts belonging to Finnish MPs were compromised during a cyberattack on the country's parliament in the autumn
6 votes -
Why I don't believe in encrypted mail providers anymore
14 votes -
Gmail suffers another outage
12 votes -
The making of Hey's dumpsterfile.email, an internet service that receives an email, prints it, and burns it in a dumpster on a livestream
11 votes -
disroot.org (providers of hosted open source services) is getting his emails blocked by Microsoft and wants your help
13 votes -
Mutt releases version 2.0
16 votes -
Protect domains that don’t send email
13 votes -
Google should rotate their email DKIM keys periodically and publish past secret keys, in order to remove the unintended capability for authenticating years-old emails
16 votes -
Backing up e-mails from an IMAP server
12 votes -
Norway has blamed Russia for a cyberattack on the email system in the parliament in August – Moscow has rejected the claim, calling it a serious and wilful provocation
6 votes -
∞ Inbox versus Inbox Zero
8 votes -
Email sucks
13 votes -
Sendgrid under siege from hacked accounts
7 votes -
A month-and-a-half of self-hosted email
10 votes -
Hosting email server
6 votes -
Email isn’t broken, email clients are
12 votes -
My take on email
14 votes -
Woolworths pays the Australian Communications and Media Authority $1 million fine for spam marketing emails
6 votes -
Email is not broken
12 votes -
Apple, Hey, and the path forward
11 votes -
Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion with hey.com
17 votes -
What's wrong with email?
14 votes -
Why email is the best discussion platform
10 votes -
How does the Gmail unsubscribe button work?
10 votes -
Edison Mail vulnerability allowing unauthorized access to email accounts of other users
4 votes -
SMTP: A Conversation
9 votes -
Firefox Private Relay - Generate unique, random, anonymous email addresses
33 votes -
Changing e-mail and cleaning up my Internet presence
I'm trying to clean up my internet presence and move away from at least Facebook and Google. I've come a long way with deleting my Facebook and it's now basically an empty shell for messaging....
I'm trying to clean up my internet presence and move away from at least Facebook and Google. I've come a long way with deleting my Facebook and it's now basically an empty shell for messaging. I've installed Signal and will start the grooming process with my friends and family now. If you have some solid arguments for the change regular ol' folks can understand please share them with me because as we all know "privacy" just isn't enough.
Next phase is the big one...Google or basically G-mail.
1. Is there any way to get an complete overview of where you've used your e-mail for a service online?
2. What e-mail would you recommend?
2a. I'm OK with paying a bit for overall quality, security and equally important UX!
2b. I don't use any other relevant Google products like Drive etc. It's just regular e-mail and sign in credentials for other services I basically need3. I use a Mac, iPhone and iCloud. Is iCloud a problem? IF this needs to change it HAS to be an "easy" switch and not like setting up a server for myself. Because it won't happen and I'm not skilled enough.
I would very much appreciate your input :)
EDIT: Thank you all for your thorough comments!
22 votes -
A novel way to prevent email overload
7 votes -
The case of the 500-mile email
42 votes -
Thunderbird's new home
11 votes -
Why I'm possessive about apostrophes
13 votes -
Email authentication: SPF, DKIM and DMARC out in the wild
8 votes -
First Contact (Internet at 50yrs old) - Dr Julian Onions recalls working to bring the Internet to Nottingham
4 votes -
Your options for saving Yahoo Groups content
9 votes -
Greg KH's patch workflow in mutt
7 votes -
The PGP Problem
12 votes -
It is your responsibility to follow up
10 votes -
aerc: Email Client for the Terminal
17 votes -
Laying out all the evidence: Shiva Ayyadurai did not invent email
9 votes -
Facebook's email-harvesting practice is under investigation in NY
7 votes -
Facebook says it 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5 million people's email contacts without their consent
22 votes -
Compromised credentials for a Microsoft support agent enabled outside access to non-enterprise Hotmail, Outlook, and MSN emails for months
9 votes -
Learn to use email with git
11 votes -
Google is rolling out AMP for Gmail to let you shop and fill out forms without leaving your inbox
22 votes -
An email marketing company left 809 million records exposed online
8 votes