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Ask HN: Are Protonmail.com Addresses Snubbed?
I've sent emails to ~ 30 entities since July, and the only 3 respondents were: a 'test' reply from a friend, one business & one .gov.
I setup a PM mail for job applications & the local/name is not offensive or inappropriate. I am sending to businesses & agents with posted job openings, so, it's not unsolicited. I expected a high number of no responses, but > 90% is much higher than I expected(before the latest layoffs trend, anyway).
Is such an address likely to go straight to spam or is there a general dislike for Proton Mail I am not aware of? I understand 'free' emails are often abused by bad actors, but I presumed that Proton Mail would be less maligned than most. Is this an incorrect assumption?
- 1attice 4y agoI recently concluded a successful job hunt with a protonmail address. I used `@pm.me` alias, which I guess didn't ring any alarm bells.
- darrmit 4y agoI have had several issues with my personal .me domain. I’ve attributed it to poorly configured systems that consider it risky simply because it’s the TLD for Montenegro - despite it having millions of registrations for other legitimate purposes.
- Maxburn 4y agoHmm, I’m currently using a me TLD and I don't think I’m having trouble. But I’m on a good host and all my dmarc etc is set right. Give yourself a check with https://www.learndmarc.com/ https://www.learndmarc.com/
- darrmit 4y agoYeah, I have SPF, DKIM, and a strict DMARC policy all configured for Fastmail, but some hosts just refuse to pass the mail. It's pretty random and sporadic, but it happens. I've also had some web forms refuse to recognize it as a valid email address.
- Maxburn 4y agoA long time ago my fastmail.us didn't get accepted in places but I can't say I've had problems with that in recent years. Never had a issue with my me, I think people are well aware of the new tlds now. As an extra bit of authenticity I've been smime signing my sent mail. Not encrypting, just signed. I figure that something no spamer is going to do and I’m hoping any spam filter will look at and pass it. Assuming they don't ignore it and make it a waste of time.
- WirelessGigabit 4y agoA big way to check if an email address is valid & belongs to a user is to see if it pops up in leaks. It also ages an address. The more leaks the better. So ymmv when you create a new account.
- runnerup 4y ago> I presumed that Proton Mail would be less maligned than most. Is this an incorrect assumption? Proton Mail seems to be less blackballed than most. But still has massive deliverability issues. If you want reliable delivery, you really have to stick with Microsoft, Google, AWS SES, or mayyyyybe FastMail. I hate this situation.
- tunap 4y agoThanks. I tried FastMail a few years back. I had delayed mail problems. Reached out to them. Their email, informing everything looked good on their end, had a 4 hour delay in the header. Heh.
- KomoD 4y agoFor those who care: FastMail servers are located in the US
- devmunchies 4y ago> you really have to stick with Microsoft, Google, AWS SES, or mayyyyybe FastMail The left-field approach would be to build your own client on top of an email API like mailgun or sendgrid (excluding the free tiers). But those are expensive for a personal use-case.
- dpkirchner 4y agoI've had bad luck with delivery on Mailgun, particularly to Yahoo and Hotmail/Outlook/Live.com. They have good luck reaching Gmail.
- devmunchies 4y agodid you pay for the dedicated IP address? My delivery was good with sendgrid after I payed the $80.
- dpkirchner 4y agoI tried to but they didn't want to assign one due to low volume (at the time). On the one hand I get it, on another I wish they were more honest about their product on its listing.
- sabellito 4y agoFWIW I've been using protonmail for 3 years and never had any issues with email deliveries.
- Mistletoe 4y agoI wanted to use Proton Mail and was very excited and made a fresh new account. Sent a test email to my old gmail and it went to spam immediately. That told me how feasible this was to use as my primary email. Google has a stranglehold on what it considers "valid" and I don't know how we use other providers as long as they have it.
- mattpallissard 4y agoOne of the common spam flags are email addresses or names similar to yours or your affiliates.
- Mistletoe 4y agoIt was a totally different name. It just didn't like the Proton domain and this is extremely uncool because all the emails I've gotten from Proton users in the past were definitely not spam and were all authentic people. I can't say the same for Gmail.
- Fatnino 4y agoRemember when Gmail was new and you needed an invite from an existing user to create an account? Yahoo mail was tossing those invites right into spam.
- teawrecks 4y agoSlightly off-topic, but this is the biggest issue I see with the fediverse. If people did one day finally get tired of the twitters changing hands, and the youtubes hurting creators, and everyone finally migrated to federated services, what's to stop everyone from joining one single mega server that treats other nodes unfairly? Just because we've succeeded in getting people off of corporatized, centralized platforms, doesn't mean we've succeeded in getting people to care. They'll still only be driven by what inconveniences them, and being on a node that is blacklisted by the most dominant node is inconvenient.
- dontbenebby 4y agoHave you previously interacted w these folks? A user might mark you as spam in their client if they perceive you as engaging in unwanted marketing especially if they’re unclear where you got their email. And proton was one of two preferred clients the hurtcore folks liked back when I was learning about OSINT + favored by a few other really rude sets of people so it’s absolutely possible especially if you have one of the newer non dot ch addresses. Do you have a trusted friend you can try emailing to test? What exactly are you emailing about?
- mark700 4y agohave you tried the protonmail provided @pm.me extension? This has worked for me for getting past spam filters. the @protonmail.com extension almost always gets forwarded to spam. if you dig around in the settings of your email, you should find this option under Account Settings -> Addresses -> Default. i can't recall, but it may be part of the paid version of protonmail.
- WithinReason 4y agoThat's probably because you have to pay to send using pm.me, and spammers use free accounts
- _xerces_ 4y agoI see Proton Mail addresses and think the owner is paranoid, hiding something or odd in some way. Similarly, if I see aol or yahoo addresses I think old or not tech savvy. It is not necessarily fair, but they are my first instincts and I am sure it is true of others.
- parsd 4y agoHmm, only Gmail addresses appear trustworthy then? What else is so prevalent... Outlook?
- lajamerr 4y agoJust make your own personal email address/domain. I already have my domain firstlastname.com with Google domains. I can setup email forwarding for free. All goes to my gmail address. As far as normal people their reaction was "That's cool you have your own email like that"
- Maxburn 4y agoIt's fun and educational. I nabbed first@last.me. Unfortunately my last name isn't quite so easy to spell so it isn't quite the easiest but it's me.
- ipython 4y agoWhat’s annoying is the number of web forms that assume all email addresses must end in .com, .edu, or maybe .net/.org if you’re lucky. And refuses to let you use your nice custom email domain because it’s “invalid”. So I have a .family address for my “primary” account and a gmail account for fallback purposes.
- tunap 4y agoI had myname.com for 15 years. I let it go when I had email hosting issues, the Covid hit & I scrutinized my cost:benefit of inflating registrar and hosting fees over the years.
- jonnycomputer 4y ago
- User23 4y agoNo matter what email provider you use, you should use a domain you own so that you can switch with minimal hassle.
- Lucent 4y agoBeware of going too far out there with new TLDs. I use something like manager@clinch.estate for house stuff and it's nearly impossible to explain over the phone or even in person. "Clinchestate at gmail?" A friend has the same problem with first@last.email.
- timsneath 4y agoI don’t have canonical data to fall back on, but I suspect that DKIM and DMARC being set up are key to successful mail delivery these days, if you’re not using one of the biggest players like Gmail. I use Rackspace Mail for my personal domain (not the hosted Exchange variety) and with these two configured I’ve had no issues with mail delivery. But many mail hosting providers still don’t support DKIM: which is one reason I’m still relying on Rackspace despite all their broader woes.
- nonameiguess 4y agoIn some ways, yes. I have a custom domain that is an alias to protonmail and was having trouble when I first started trying to do foster care licensing. Once I finally started getting through and asked agencies what the heck the deal was, it turned out my emails were automatically going to the spam folder or not even being delivered, provided their own providers were Microsoft or Google, which was true of just about all of them. This is true even though I have valid DKIM, registered the domain under a real name, and am the only user and have not been sending spam anywhere. I guess it's a guilty until proven innocent world out there. Also I was getting what I thought was an annoying bug trying to register for a video streaming subscription for months under an actual protonmail address I use only for that purpose so the spam it gets doesn't flood regular email. It was just silently never getting to the payment page and reloading the page to enter an email without any kind of error or failure message. Each time, I figured screw it, probably broken, I'll try again next month. I finally just tried a gmail address instead and it worked fine.
- shmoogy 4y agoI'm going to toss out there, we see a lot of our fraudulent orders being placed with proton mail accounts.
- plaguepilled 4y agoProtonmail addresses are great for signing up to accounts for because the mailbox is encrypted, but not great for actually sending mail to peers because of the spam filtering that google sometimes does. I wish it weren't so, because its a great service and is so much faster than gmail in my experience, but that's where we're at.
- opportune 4y agoI have found a lot of commercial websites do not allow proton mail now, likely to prevent abuse. It makes me sad, but I get it. I am not sure why you would use a proton mail address for job applications, it’s like making a website with a weird TLD instead of a .com - no real positive benefit besides maybe saving money, highly likely to be viewed with suspicion.
- diehunde 4y agoI’ve never had any issues with the @pm.me extension and I’ve been using it ever since it came out. Maybe try that instead ?
- aborsy 4y agoNo issue here. Gmail seems to have an issue with spam lately.