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Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

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Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#121

Post by SXX »

imglorp wrote: post #35

There's a much harder problem, granted, but the world needs a throwaway SMS service. Even Imgur needs a phone to sign up now :( There are already some services like this, however it seems they have a smallish pool of phone numbers. Eventually everyone uses those to sign up, one time, somewhere (like Imgur) and that number is then useless for that site. Is there a better way?

Actually are there a lot of services like this in Russia [0][1] and their pools of numbers is nearly unlimited. It's also super cheap for local numbers, but obviously much more expensive for non-CIS countries. Obviously it's all shady stuff and used mostly for spam or all kind of social media automation.

[0] https://sms-activate.ru

[1] https://5sim.net

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#122

Post by mirimir »

willbrowning wrote: post #106
geocrasher wrote: post #84

Delivering mail services on the Internet is hard. Really hard. It's even harder to do correctly, and harder yet to prevent abuse. It is quite likely that you're going to end up in a game of whack-a-mole with abuse issues, and that's going to be your primary fight. The moment somebody abuses the system, your IP gets RBL'd or DNSBL'd and it's game over until it's fixed. It's a cool product that has a lot of great legit…

I agree there may well be some challenges along the way but I'll do my best to prepare and prevent them. I'm always reading and learning more about the best measures to have in place for the server. Thank you, hopefully I'll be able to stay sane!

I trust that you've planned for the inevitable demands from criminal investigators. And perhaps seizures.

Example: https://cock.li/transparency/

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#123

Post by piotrkubisa »

mratzloff wrote: post #118
willbrowning wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there may well be some challenges along the way but I'll do my best to prepare and prevent them. I'm always reading and learning more about the best measures to have in place for the server. Thank you, hopefully I'll be able to stay sane!

It really doesn't take much at all to get blacklisted by Gmail or others. Companies like MailChimp have agreements in place with Google. Unfortunately, mail delivery is far, far harder than it should be.

> Unfortunately, mail delivery is far, far harder than it should be.

However, we still receive spam e-mails to our inboxes.

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#124

Post by madamelic »

imglorp wrote: post #35

There's a much harder problem, granted, but the world needs a throwaway SMS service. Even Imgur needs a phone to sign up now :( There are already some services like this, however it seems they have a smallish pool of phone numbers. Eventually everyone uses those to sign up, one time, somewhere (like Imgur) and that number is then useless for that site. Is there a better way?

I run a site [1] which is doing this, only more permanent. I am not nearly brave or rich enough to run a 10minutemail but for phone numbers.

The only issue is a lot of sites treat all VoIP numbers as second-class citizens and disallow them silently. You will be allowed to add the numbers, but the services will silently refuse to call or text them, locking you out of your account.

Let me know if anyone is interested in trying it out. I am relaunching PhonePrivacy after this weekend so lots of upgrades to come. :)

[1]: https://phoneprivacy.co

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#125

Post by itake »

seanph wrote: post #7
itake wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a huge fan of the name just because it stands out too much. Companies will see that in their db and think its a fake temporary email.

That did occur to me too, but if they demand an email address, there it is. You can also set it up with your own domain. It just takes some effort.

If you setup your own domain, then its a lot less anonymous :)

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#126

Post by madamelic »

willbrowning wrote: post #40
cddotdotslash wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through a very similar process when building a product as an engineer (albeit B2B, but I think the same ideas apply here). When I first started, I wanted to undercut the market and charge what I felt was an extremely fair price (I was charging $8/month when competitors were charging $500/month). After scaling the product for a few years, it was eventually acquired, but one of the biggest regrets I've had is no…

That's an interesting story and has some good points. My main concern would be the fact that complete email solutions such as Tutanota, Posteo are very cheap at 1 euro a month or so. So I'm not sure users who aren't as concerned about their privacy would think it was worth it for $4.99 per month+ I mean I could be completely wrong, just my thoughts from some of the feedback I've received so far.

You aren't selling to techies. This is super easy to set up for almost any engineer (beyond a few fantastic features you added).

What you need to do is effectively twist the knife, make the reader feel the pain. "Don't you think $10 / mo is worth your sanity and a clean inbox?" essentially.

$10 is basically nothing to your modern professional. That's 1 - 2 coffee runs.

$1 or free (!!!) is way too cheap for an indie maker. Ignore the people who complain about price. There are always going to be people complaining, fire them. Those types will always find something to complain and twist your arm about.

Even $10 / mo for me, someone who has set this up myself, might be worth it just for additional features and being able to easily add more domains.

EDIT: Save free forever for the VC-backed companies who are burning other people's money in the hopes of hockey stick growth.

Free trials are fantastic, but free forever is a losing gambit in my opinion.

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#127

Post by bscphil »

bfdm wrote: post #103
matheusmoreira wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Why does everything ask for phone numbers these days? What's next, a picture of my government ID?

Because disposable emails are trivially used by casual users and companies see phone number as harder to falsify (correctly, IMO). It's not impossible, obviously. We know SMS can be hijacked and spoofed, but the casual user won't be doing this, today.

If the point of requiring an ID is to prevent abuse, why do I care about what casual users are doing? What I care about is preventing signups from people who want to abuse the service, but presumably making things harder on casual users doesn't work toward that goal.

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#128

Post by brokenmachine »

bscphil wrote: post #127
bfdm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because disposable emails are trivially used by casual users and companies see phone number as harder to falsify (correctly, IMO). It's not impossible, obviously. We know SMS can be hijacked and spoofed, but the casual user won't be doing this, today.

If the point of requiring an ID is to prevent abuse, why do I care about what casual users are doing? What I care about is preventing signups from people who want to abuse the service, but presumably making things harder on casual users doesn't work toward that goal.

Still, it raises the bar.

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#129

Post by stanislavb »

willbrowning wrote: post #106
geocrasher wrote: post #84

Delivering mail services on the Internet is hard. Really hard. It's even harder to do correctly, and harder yet to prevent abuse. It is quite likely that you're going to end up in a game of whack-a-mole with abuse issues, and that's going to be your primary fight. The moment somebody abuses the system, your IP gets RBL'd or DNSBL'd and it's game over until it's fixed. It's a cool product that has a lot of great legit…

I agree there may well be some challenges along the way but I'll do my best to prepare and prevent them. I'm always reading and learning more about the best measures to have in place for the server. Thank you, hopefully I'll be able to stay sane!

Hey mate, it looks polished. I hope it gets traction. As my way to help you, I'll feature it on SaaSHub (https://www.saashub.com). If you get it verified, I can promote it on the tribune as well.

Good luck!

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source anonymous email forwarding service

#130

Post by threwawasy1228 »

dboreham wrote: post #92
willbrowning wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned in another comment the only true solution to that problem is to use your own domain name. I will also be adding more generic domains to use in the future for users to choose from.

Which will all be blacklisted as will the subnets within which your IPs sit and then your hosting provider or ISP will terminate service.

I know this is kind of a disparaging comment, but I would really like to hear their response to it. There have been numerous good services similar to them in the past and all have been placed on spam listings and blocked by most major services. Mixnet solutions have worked for over 30 years, they aren't particularly novel, what is novel is having an email service that allows reasonable privacy whilst not ending up on a spam listing.
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