Experiences using @firstnamelastname.xxx as main email address(es)?

[colonelblimp]

Hello,

First message in the forum. I bought a firstnamelastname.xxx domain a while ago. I'm now planning to use it as my primary email (instead of firstnamelastname@gmail.com), together with Firefox Relay as alias generator. By the way, my experience with Relay has been great so far.

For some reason, I haven't made the transition yet. There's something that stops me from using a @firstnamelastname.com email address. It's like I would be telling everyone who I am. In a way, it's absurd considering I've been using firstnamelastname@gmail.com since 2005 as my main email account.

In any case, the main reason I decided to open a thread is to ask the forum about your experiences using @firstnamelastname.xxx as your primary email. Are there any important pros and cons? Am I overthinking this or are there legitimate reasons not to use @firstnamelastname.xxx as primary email address(es)?

Finally, an important factor in my decision is that I would be using my own domain to log in to important services like bank accounts, password manager, etc.

Thanks.

[TenFour]

I wouldn't use it as my main email address. Can be nice when applying for a job or if you have a business that is essentially you, like same being a professional photographer. One huge problem with my name is that everyone spells it incorrectly, meaning emails get lost. The major problem is as you note, it becomes another piece of personal information you are giving away for no particular reason. Lists of emails are stolen all the time and if it is your name it becomes really trivial to link it to you. For every day use I like something like a Gmail address that is easy to type in, and I only use my personalized domain emails for specialized uses like promoting my business.

[webecedarian]

Exactly. I know someone who has done that, and uses it exclusively for soliciting freelance work. She has another work email at her office, and another one for her personal mail.

That seem right to me. Most of us would not want every single thing we email to have our full name on it. For banks, I imagine it makes sense. But if you were signing up for anonymous forums?

[Berenburger]

I’m using only my email address firstname@lastname.net for trustworthy recipients. Mostly personal correspondents.

[hadaso]

I don't see a big problem with using businessname@firstnamelasstname.xxx with businesses where you supply your first and last name anyway (+ credit card number + billling address + shipping address etc.). If it's something where you don't have to supply this kind of information it's better to you some other email address that contains no personal info, unless it's somewhere you feel comfortable with revealing who you are.
I had an email address like firstname.lastname@mailingaddress.domain.tld (so anyone who had it could potentially send me a letter in a real envelope with a real stamp, or a parcel, but I haven't used it much.

[TenFour]

Despite what I wrote above I see lots of people using their names in their email addresses, and I use them to figure out stuff about the people. For example, I am suspicious when the person's name in the address is different than the one they put at the bottom of their email. I keep getting spam like that.

[Tsunami]

Originally Posted by webecedarian

Exactly. I know someone who has done that, and uses it exclusively for soliciting freelance work. She has another work email at her office, and another one for her personal mail.

That sounds a bit like a lot of work to keep all email accounts up-to-date, as opposed to one email address for all. Or, as you wish, one professional email address and one for private correspondence. I don't see what could be wrong with using @firstnamelastname.xxx as domain for either of those purposes.

I would assume there is likely a website connected to the domain too, so people would find your domainname anyways and thus associate the email address with the person running that website.

That said, I'd keep the firstnamelastname@gmail account too, even if not checking it often, it's too precious to have your first and last name with such a provider so I wouldn't give that up.

[TenFour]

Just this morning I did a Google search on my Gmail address and it was interesting that most of the references were quite old and quite obscure. Not sure why that is, but it is one way to see how widespread your email address is, whether Gmail or another, on the net. From what I read, no matter what your email address, if you use the same one for many things advertisers and others will use it to tie together a profile of you. Not so worried about advertising uses, but I imagine other nefarious types might do the same thing to learn about who you are and your activities, where you live, etc. Though OTOH there is so much information out in the wild about all of us it is almost impossible to hide. The biggest danger I think is that your email address is often one of the two pieces of information needed to log you into lots of different accounts, so if someone gets ahold of FirstNameLastName@whatever.com it is trivial for them to look up who you are and what accounts you might be associated with.