> Using an inconsistent and unlikely email address [...] By "unlikely" I mean one that no reasonable person would want to have, usually containing a big batch of numbers in it.
This is awful.
I create random e-mail addresses for every online merchant I have to interact with. It's by far the best way to avoid both real spam and "promotional message" spam.
I don't even use my "real" domains, because anybody who knows my name and the domains I use can construct my personal e-mail addresses. I have special domains dedicated to online commerce, and they look pretty random.
If you go out of your way to appear fraudulent, you can't be angry when you get flagged as fraudulent.
What do you want merchants to do? It appears you have gone out of your way to make sure all your information is completely unconnected to you, which is exactly the case for someone committing fraud.
"All of your information" is a bit over the top don't you think? It's just an e-mail address. It's not relevant to anything. The important info is address and name.
I have the same system. It achieves 100% reliable spam protection with zero false positives and zero false negatives. It's a perfect system, if I follow some basic rules. It also eliminates phishing, except in case of unannounced data leaks. I mark e-mails received from random e-mail addresses I generated in the past with green color, so it's immediately obvious what is legitimate and what is not.
It'd be a bit ironic if someone would think that I'm a fraud, because of this system that is designed to protect me from fraud. :D
Never had an issue with businesses accepting my addresses, except one person looking at me strangely, when I was opening a bank account with a random email address, when I told him that no, I'll not repeat the address to him. :)
All the person on the receiving end has to do, is open the email address domain in the browser, and there's an explanation what's up right there.
If I were a fraudster I'd make an address that looks perfectly ordinary. It's so weird for someone to assume that weird looking address indicates fraud.
> It's so weird for someone to assume that weird looking address indicates fraud.
I mean, they aren't assuming that... they are basing it on data. They have lots of data on fraudulent purchases, and apparently that is one of the indicators.
I usually add the company name in front and have gotten confused and pointed questions from staff repeatedly about how I have an email address with their company. I have given up trying to explain and have resorted to more obscure initials.
Become modern? Make wire transfers fast enough to be usable for purchases online. Securing the bank account could be done then with 2FA (smartcard, phone whatever).
Accept a certain amount of loss in exchange for fair customer treatment. Obviously this isn't binary, but for something like an email address, it can be considered a factor, but should not be a determining one.
>Accept a certain amount of loss in exchange for fair customer treatment.
"accepting loss" gets priced accordingly. personally, i'd rather give merchants my real email address and not pay an extra fee simply to give you the privilege of keeping your email address secret.
If you want to make yourself indistinguishible from a fraudster, please find a way to do it without affecting the price everybody else pays.
Lots of things that help other customers besides you are priced into the product you pay for. In some cases (like if a company auto-rejected strange email addresses), I don't think it's fair to expect other customers or the company to cater only to how you purchase.
Of course, just being "flagged" as is the case here instead of rejected is fine. It's larger companies that use these heuristics as their final answer that are the problem, and we shouldn't blame/punish legitimate customers.
This is awful.
I create random e-mail addresses for every online merchant I have to interact with. It's by far the best way to avoid both real spam and "promotional message" spam.
I don't even use my "real" domains, because anybody who knows my name and the domains I use can construct my personal e-mail addresses. I have special domains dedicated to online commerce, and they look pretty random.