Email address issues

Help 👋
#1

I own a domain and create new email addresses (essentially aliases) when setting up new accounts - this helps filtering incoming email and allows me to ‘kill’ an email address completely if the account sends too much spam or is compromised (TalkTalk!).

So freetrade@example.com exists as an alias, because I own example.com (I don’t, this is an example) and email sent to it appears in my inbox.

But these are ‘receive only’ email addresses. To communicate with Freetrade I need to send from the email I have registered with them. Which doesn’t exist.

How can I change my email address (and my linked bank account) when I cannot send from the email address I have registered with Freetrade?

#2

They can probably change it if you message support in app. I’m may be worth reconsidering using aliases for banks and similar more important accounts.

Treating it the same as signing up to other random websites or newsletters seems a bit overkill

#4

It’s simple in any email program to send email that looks as if it comes from any arbitrary address. Look for settings in whatever program or app that you use for changing your ‘from’ and ‘reply-to’ addresses. In gmail on the web, these can be found under settings, accounts, send mail as. That should allow you to communicate with Freetrade.

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#5

I’d hope Freetrade check (and am sure they do) actual email addresses and not spoofed ones

#6

Email is not a secure means of communication. I assume that Freetrade prefer to communicate via email rather than in-app for convenience with their workflow system integration, but it’s not for security purposes. (If anyone there does think email adds to security, we’re all in trouble! But I’m sure they don’t.)

@fatshark, if you own your domain and have the ability to create mailboxes at will, then I expect you can probably figure out how to send mail from the domain too. That’s as ‘actual’ as an email address ever is.

#7

@fatshark this is the exact same setup I use. As Microsoft O365 doesn’t allow you to send from addresses not created in the mailbox, I use AWS Simple Email Service (SES).

Verify your domains with them by adding DNS records, then you can send from any address on that domain you verified.

Simply then create a new “account” in your preferred mail programme, put in some dummy incoming details as you won’t use that, ensuring you input the SMTP details AWS SES gives you. That what you can send mail as you wish.

I setup both accounts in the same programme so I can hit reply and it uses the correct send address.

Alternatively, if you don’t use O365, then almost all programmes will allow you to send as an alias if the server allows. Apple Mail for example allows you to simply add another alias to the account (you will do this for each email address you wish to send from).

#8

it’s a pretty hard thing to do, other than checking it’s in a valid format. I think there was a part of the email protocol that allowed you to ping the smtp server to see if the email address actually existed but most providers don’t implement it because it’s so ripe for abuse

#9

With thanks for the suggestions.

The solution that worked was to use Google mails ‘send mail from’ function as described by @FailedTuringTest .Thank you.

Modifying the Reply-To address in another email client did not work.

Actually, the Google mail solution was the first I tried that worked. I’m sure AWS would have but I don’t want yet another thing to manage.

@Jimmy it might appear overkill but it helps sort incoming emails and keeps them separate from personal communication. My personal email is relatively uncluttered and I operate a ‘catchall’ account to sweep everything else into. The alternative, of creating rules to filter everything once your personal email is on every spammers list globally is a right pain.

Interestingly, when setting up the Freetrade account (asking for additional paperwork etc) support were able to respond to emails with a different ‘From’ address, but then no longer responded to a direct reply to their emails. I suspect the former is a bit of a security risk …

Case closed :smiley:

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#10

There are specific services used for validating email addresses. The company I am at uses 2 providers.

Often they will have deals with major email services to validate an email address or they check other sources such as other businesses reporting addresses as fake.

They say they have a greater than 98% success but I would say that’s more like 80% with a biased towards saying an address is unlikely to be deliverable than being too lenient and saying it will be deliverable when it won’t.

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#11

Emaill is not a secure means of communication. :+1:
This is true @FailedTuringTest

Freetrade is using email for all communication including change of address, change of email and even for signing into app.

My only hope is they will have better auth for webapp :crossed_fingers: