Multiple email addresses

[circatee]

This is not a support conversation, but, merely a thread to understand your setup.

Do you have multiple email addresses, one for online/shopping and such, and another for more professional/personal communication?
Do you also split your Contact list, per email account?

Example, for your online/shopping email account, are the Contacts that are stored there, primarily contacts related to online shopping and such?
Then, for the professional/personal account, does that one purely have contacts that are personal and professional?

I am trying to work on the best method of keeping my online email content, seperate from my personal domain email content. Hence, the questions.

 

[eyoungren]

This is not a support conversation, but, merely a thread to understand your setup.

Do you have multiple email addresses, one for online/shopping and such, and another for more professional/personal communication?
Do you also split your Contact list, per email account?

Example, for your online/shopping email account, are the Contacts that are stored there, primarily contacts related to online shopping and such?
Then, for the professional/personal account, does that one purely have contacts that are personal and professional?

I am trying to work on the best method of keeping my online email content, seperate from my personal domain email content. Hence, the questions.

Ten years ago or so I had a lot of email addresses. I tended to collect them, just for the point of having an email for a specific dot com address.

As security became an issue and some of this stuff became a hassle, I either dropped addresses or let them die off. Today, I still have a handful though.

I have one from my ISP. one from Yahoo (which I got in 1999), three from Google and two or three from Apple.

The ISP email I hand out to friends and those I trust as well as some businesses. Since my ISP switched to Yahoo as the email provider though, I hand it out less.

My Yahoo address I hand out to to anything or anyone I expect to get spam from. Yahoo's spam filter is robust and I don't see a lot of the spam that I'd get from other email accounts. I also hold on to this address because it's free and I can access it from almost any device. Other email addresses I have can be cut off.

Of the three from Google, one is my work email. I don't control it, it was created for me. The second is an old email address I never hand out, but that has my Google Voice number attached to it. If I delete that account, I lose the GV phone number. The third Google email account is my newest one, which I also do not hand out. It has all my personal contacts and calendars attached to it (transferred over from my old Gmail account).

The Apple emails are from the various times I created email accounts when setting up a new iPhone/iPad. I very rarely use them, if ever, and I have not deleted them because Apple still sends me stuff to those addresses. And at this point, no one else has the addresses I do. I never hand out these email addresses and most times I can't even remember what they are.

So, that's how I have mine set up.

 

[drrich2]

When I was working, my work e-mail was from the workplace I.T. system, and generally handled via Outlook for Windows on a PC. My personal e-mail was via the Apple iCloud service, mainly handled by my iOS devices (IIRC, the system can generate an alias for me). And thus contacts were separate.

This may well not be the route you wish to take, but there is an option that requires less technical sophistication in setting things up...using separate app.s for separate 'identities.'

Yes, this is a low end user, unsophisticated approach that requires you to work with 2 different platforms instead of one, but it is an option.

Imagine handling your personal e-mail and contacts via Apples iCloud service, Mail and Contacts, and your work e-mail and contacts via Gmail, etc...

I have a vaguely analogous thing on my Mac. I mainly use Safari, with Chrome as a backup when I run into compatibility hassles. Sometime back, our kid via school got a Google Classroom account. In theory, I should be able to switch the active user between my account and her's, but it doesn't work; it stays on her, and Google Maps doesn't work because it claims she's not cleared for that (not their words).

So I use Google Chrome when I want to use Google Maps.

Recently my wife, who can hardly remember a rarely used password at gunpoint (figuratively speaking), expressed frustration when needing to join a work video conference from home (she's one of those people who uses an iPhone, rarely a desktop computer). I pointed out she could use FireFox on my Mac, and it'd store her username, passwords, etc... I'm not holding my breath for her to get this done...

This is also good if you want to log onto government systems like checking your Social Security status, and it's handy if the browser remembers just your log in info.

And it's pretty straightforward and easy.

 

[Ruggy]

I've always had loads of them- too many.
But nowadays I tend to use 'hide my email' for the majority as that makes it a lot easier.
That is, I mostly create a unique email on hide my email for each account so I have about 80 now.
It's an extra layer of security, just like having unique passwords, so that if someone gets one address they don't have access to any other. The less info you leave around the less vulnerable you are to a breadcrumb attack.
You get some phishing but it's to the wrong email address then it makes it a whole lot easier to spot.
It's also quite funny too sometimes. If your name is Joe and your email begins with Joe the spam will probably start 'Hello Joe'. If your email is 'panhandle325' the spam will begin 'Hello panhandle' and you know then it isn't from someone who knows you.
Or if someone gets hacked and you are suddenly getting 200 spams a day, it's so much easier just to dump that one email. And you will be OK giving your email to someone like Amazon or Google, they have the money to put good security in place but the local school, realtor, doctor or law firm won't.
I also have dump email addresses I've never looked at for when you have to provide an email for something but you're not sure about it. The sort of thing you need to look at and then 20 seconds later realise it's not interesting. I don't see the point in giving them valuable information.
I'm also extremely cautious about phone numbers. Very often you can get by with just giving all zeros ( here as most cell phones begin with a 6, I give 6 and the rest zero)
And you should because they want your number to sell to make money, not because they are ever going to ring you.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

One primary email, one backup email for when services request a such for resetting accounts in case primary email is lost, and a work email. Never seen the need for any other.

 

[eyoungren]

Imagine handling your personal e-mail and contacts via Apples iCloud service, Mail and Contacts, and your work e-mail and contacts via Gmail, etc...

I do something similar. My work contacts are all attached to my work email, which is a Google account. That said, once I realized early on that iDevices tend to default to iCloud for storing contacts, calendars, etc and then those things not being accessible by any system that can't access iCloud, I pulled all that stuff off iCloud and put it on my personal Google account.

I can add my Google account to almost any device (including my iPhones/iPads), but unless things have changed recently, it's not possible to add my iCloud to anything Apple doesn't support. I want to be able to shift cross platform whenever I like so having all this in iCloud doesn't work for me.

 

[MultiFinder17]

I have three. My primary personal email address I've had since around 2001 back when iTools was a thing, and I've had it migrated to .Mac, then to MobileMe, and now to iCloud. I like having an old @mac.com email address.

My "Other stuff" email account is a gmail account I set up in the late 2000s and is mostly used for more outward-facing things, less personal stuff.

Finally I have a work-provided email.

 

[Huntn]

I have 5 Google email addresses, one for me official, me gaming, and 3 others that used to have designations, say merchants, or electronics/conputer related, but in actuality if not me, or gaming, I just use them interchangeably for “other”. In Google you can link your emails and set them up so they all transfer over into your main email account, so you don’t have to check them individually,

 

[it wasnt me]

Do you have multiple email addresses, one for online/shopping and such, and another for more professional/personal communication?

I have roughly 32 e-mail addresses, most of which are redirections. If (e.g.) my bank "loses" my data, my e-mail address bankname@my.domain will receive its first spam. I can just shut that one down and tell my bank about (the breach and) the new address then.

The number of actual e-mail accounts owned by me is notably smaller though:

• One iCloud address for everything Apple,
• one e-mail account for most web forums,
• one e-mail account for political inquiries,
• one e-mail account for "everything" (previously, but still in use),
• one e-mail account for "everything" (rather new, running on my own mail server, but not everyone trying to contact me has made the switch yet, because there is no reason for that).

There are two or three "former e-mail accounts" of mine which I check twice a year, but I don't really think about them much anymore. My employer also gave me an e-mail account which I never use for personal correspondence, so it's rather his than mine.