One of the benefits to having my own domain is the ability to create as many custom email addresses as I want. When I sign up on a new website, I create a custom email just for that website and redirect it to my “main” email account.

Today, I received a junk email for the email address I set up only for the NBC Store. It is a “amazon delivery” notice with a “confirmation link” that redirects to a website in Spain.

Since I have never used the email address for the NBC Store anywhere else, and since it was sent directly to that alias account I created, I think it is safe to say the NBC Store’s customer email server has been compromised.

If you have an email account with the NBC Store, get ready for a flood of junk mail and malware.

You don’t have to own your own domain to set up a “ghost” email address. Google lets you create something similar with any gmail address!

On the next website that wants you to sign up with your email address, type a + sign after your gmail name and before the @ to make a “ghost” email address that will forward to your main gmail.com address.

For example, if bill.gates@gmail.com wanted to sign up at the NBCSTORE and wanted to use a “ghost” email address, he could just type in bill.gates+NBCSTORE@gmail.com at NBC Store’s website. NBC Store would send their emails to bill.gates+NBCSTORE@gmail.com and Bill would see it in his regular bill.gates@gmail.com inbox as coming from bill.gates+NBCSTORE@gmail.com.

While this takes longer than just putting in a standard email address, I find “ghost” email addresses are invaluable in finding out who sells email addresses (LinkedIn), who keeps them reserved (Apple, Microsoft), and on occasion, who has been hacked.