Advice Request What does Your Email address reveal about yourself?

Please provide comments and solutions that are helpful to the author of this topic.

Do any of your personal email address username's contain PII?

  • Yes

    Votes: 16 80.0%
  • No

    Votes: 4 20.0%

  • Total voters
    20

Ink

Administrator
Thread author
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Staff Member
Well-known
Jan 8, 2011
22,361
Questions for fun.
  1. Does it contain your real name, abbreviations or initials?
  2. Does it contain your DOB, or the last 2 digits?
  3. Does using a non-[dot]com domain reveal your location (country)?
  4. If your email address was leaked in a breach, (see above) - does it pose a privacy/ID risk?
 

South Park

Level 9
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Well-known
Jun 23, 2018
431
No to those particular questions, but some of my early e-mail addresses on free services contained too much personal info, like my religious affiliation, so I had to create aliases for use outside of e-mailing close friends. Fortunately, Outlook mail makes this very easy.
 
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blackice

Level 38
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Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,730
One of mine is my name, used for mostly official business where that’s a know quantity. And my main personal gmail is some made up nonsense with no connection to my legal person, not for any specific reason of privacy. I have a couple others with varying non specific info that could be derived from them.
 

Gandalf_The_Grey

Level 76
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Honorary Member
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Content Creator
Well-known
Apr 24, 2016
6,505
My personal email reveals my family name and my country (.nl).
My work email reveals my full name but ends on .com.
 
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Marko :)

Level 20
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Top Poster
Well-known
Aug 12, 2015
954
Questions for fun.
  1. Does it contain your real name, abbreviations or initials?
  2. Does it contain your DOB, or the last 2 digits?
  3. Does using a non-[dot]com domain reveal your location (country)?
  4. If your email address was leaked in a breach, (see above) - does it pose a privacy/ID risk?
1. Yes
Personal e-mail address used for professional purposes and important stuff contains my real name.​
2. No
I never put real DOB to any account. But I do have particular date I set to all my accounts.​
3. No
Even though my ISP offers creation of multiple e-mail addresses, I will never use that service from them. It's not because it reveals country I live in, but because e-mail will be valid as long as I'm their user. The moment I switch to an other ISP, I lose access to it.​
Funny thing: our national ISP's e-mail addresses not only reveal country you're in, but the city too.​
4. Maybe
My Gmail account was leaked in Dropbox breach back in 2012. Immediately stopped being their user (it took them too long to acknowledge leak and to do something), but my e-mail account was secure at all times. I did receive some spam, not a lot (maybe few Nigerian princes and lottery mails), but I stopped receiving spam years ago. And I cannot say if that was the product of Dropbox leak, or some other service I've registered to. Otherwise, tried looking for the e-mail address on the internet, no results anywhere. I think my privacy was never actually compromised.​
 

TairikuOkami

Level 35
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Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
May 13, 2017
2,452
My public spam email: TairikuOkami#azet.sk - I tried others, but I could not find anything working for me, this one reveals the country, not like it is a secret.
My personal email used as an alternative: Username.Name#gmail.com - my name is searchable, so not hard to guess for slightly persistent people.
Personal email: Username.Name#mail.ru - I got a few glances for it, due to russophobia, it is also blocked sometimes, even by my employer.
Government issued email: randomnumber#slovensko.sk - I use it for backup purposed only. Personal ID (smartcard) required for login.

As for DOB, I post a fake one, it is like a social number in USA here, but it is approximate to reveal my age, since it a basic info people are interested in.
 

Thales

Level 15
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Nov 26, 2017
708
Personal: "myname@gmail.com". Do not really care. I use it on Facebook, Paypal etc because they already have my name.
Other for forums and everywhere else is "randomname@gmail.com". Simple.
I worked with 4-5 different emails/alias (1 for games 1for banking 1 for forums etc) like others suggested here but it was a wrong suggestion. I don't recommend it. Keep it simple!
 

Moonhorse

Level 37
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Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
May 29, 2018
2,602
I use real name email for working & personal stuff like healthcare etc.

I have different emails for specific stuff like gaming accounts so no one can recover them since they wont know my email address

And lastly i have spam accounts for spam only, some of them are breached

All these emails have 2-factor authentication enabled and different password of course
 

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