I do this. The awkward thing is when I am in person or on the phone and have to explain that my customer email address is [their_business_name]@my_weird_domain.tld

But the people usually just nod along.

The other downside is that it's forward-in only, wish I could proxy responses without setting up a whole new inbox (and outbox).

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cube00 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The only awkward thing is when I am in person or on the phone and have to explain that my customer email address

I had one small business aggressively threaten me that they fully owned their business name and I wasn't allowed to use it in my email address.

My solution was to keep my wonderful aliases and dump them. If a business is concerned but nice about it I'll offer an alternative such as plumber@

> The other downside is that it's forward-in only, wish I could proxy responses without setting up a whole new inbox (and outbox).

If you have your own domain most mail providers don't care what username@ you use on your sent mail so you shouldn't need any additional mailboxes (especially if they already offer inbound catch all)

I also use the ReplayAsOriginalRecipientUp [1] extension in Thunderbird which takes the recipient address and puts it as the sender for ongoing communication.

[1]: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/reply...

	▲	Marsymars 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I had one small business aggressively threaten me that they fully owned their business name and I wasn't allowed to use it in my email address. I haven't had that, but before I switched to Hide My Email I've had many businesses ask if I was an employee of the business - many people don't intuit the difference between john@bank.com and bank@john.com.
	▲	kstrauser 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		"Sorry for the misunderstanding. My new email is yourcompanysucksinmyopinion@example.com."

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jonotime 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just happened to me today! I was at the Verizon store and my address was verizon@... Sometimes it leads to confusion, but sometimes it leads to getting extra special treatment actually! They think I'm someone important.

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chuckadams 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They act as if I discovered fire when I give them a plussed address.

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SXX 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Its not the worst.

I was once on the phone with german insurance provider and they dictateted me email to send documents to: kundenbetreuung@passportcard.de

I dont speak German so it was both tough and funny EuroTrip-like moment.

Yes its really email they use.

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snark42 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can proxy responses with a ton of e-mail clients, even Gmail supports it once you verify you can get a message sent to that address.

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shoo_pl 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Not really, this only works for other emails hosted by Gmail (including Workspaces) or if you supply SMPT that will send those emails. If you use simple email forwarding from your DNS provider, you don't have SMPT server to give to gmail:/

	▲	phi0 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Google will happily send from smtp.gmail.com, after verifying that you own that email. You won’t get DKIM, but Google’s reputation is enough to make the mail land in people’s inboxes.

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airstrike 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

sometimes I'm lazy and I just have it as spam@firstlast.com or noreply@firstlast.com and they get quite puzzled

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Henchman21 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So I guess I'll take a moment and plug my email provider, Fastmail. Their integration with 1Password to enable creation of Masked Email at account creation time is really fantastic! I have several hundred of these at this point, it's made my digital life appreciably better.

But to the point of forward-in-only -- I use the fastmail web client and iOS client. Both of these respond using the Masked Email address if you choose to respond to an email. In fact I can choose any of my masked email addressed as I am composing mail to initial communication from that address.

In short, "it just works". I really can't say enough good things about Fastmail!