Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

nbox.notif.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 212 posts

Re: Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

#41

Post by bigtunacan »

I think this is a good idea, but pretty poorly executed again.

Another user commented that you could just register your own domain and do this; that's great for the average hacker news reader, but not so great for the average Joe so a service like this (if done correctly) would be pretty convenient.

Things that jump out right away as bad about this NBox.

1) It just auto generates an email for me. That's going to be a pain in the ass to remember.

2) Wait; how do I login? I literally don't understand how to login to this app short of going to the site and I get auto logged in by the Chrome extension?

3) Why do I even need a Chrome extension to get my email; where is the password protection so I can login from a different device or god forbid my computer crashes?

4) Not every service asking for an email address is a web service. If I sit down for dinner at an Applebees and order a meal a server is going to tell me the appetizer is free if I just provide my email address... and I want that free appetizer minus the side of spam...

As someone else noted mailhero.io is basically the same service as this, but it's big flaw is that the real email address is exposed since it's always included in the provided email address.

spam.u.later@mailhero.io (ah; real address is later@mailhero.io) Also; many other email services (including GMail can do the samething as mailhero using + addressing and adding rules.

Re: Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

#42

Post by bdav24 »

toddmorey wrote: post #35
_Marak_ wrote: post #9

As an alternative, you could register a domain with a catch-all email address and simply register for new services on the fly using a unique string for each site. Have the catch-all forward to your main email account. For example, I would sign-up for HN using hackernews@marak.com and for Reddit using reddit@marak.com Simple and effective.

Gmail allows you to create unlimited unique addresses by using the + symbol. so you could do: username+trello@gmail.com. It's worked well for me for a few years. The only downsides I see are that (very few) sites still complain about the perfectly legal + symbol and some sites / bots are probably starting to reverse engineer that since it still exposes your username. But so far, I've yet to have a single site or serv…

Hi toddmorey, yes a well-known trick ;) The downside is that the + part can be easily removed by spammers.

Re: Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

#43

Post by amenod »

eriknstr wrote: post #29
_Marak_ wrote: post #9

As an alternative, you could register a domain with a catch-all email address and simply register for new services on the fly using a unique string for each site. Have the catch-all forward to your main email account. For example, I would sign-up for HN using hackernews@marak.com and for Reddit using reddit@marak.com Simple and effective.

Been there done that. If you catch all e-mail you will also get a lot of spam to random addresses like say sven@marak.com, lollerskates95@marak.com and so on and so forth. So then you need spam filtering anyway, or you need to configure which addresses are valid. I still host my own e-mail but I no longer do catch-all. There are only a few sites and services I care about. For those I have trusted them with my e-mail…

Or you can use hackernews.really@marak.com and reddit.really@marak.com and only forward *.really@marak.com.

I have learned to keep a personal e-mail address for friends & somewhat trusted people, but never businesses. Businesses (and all government offices, kids' school,...) get their one-time address. If spammers somehow get to it, it is much easier to cut them off, and I also know who leaked the address to them.

Of course, http://www.mailcatch.com/ rules for those one-time "no, I will not let you spam me" registrations.

Re: Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

#44

Post by ryan-c »

jacobwg wrote: post #12
jswny wrote: post #6

So how is this different from something like Mailinator.com? In my opinion, I can't see a use case in which I'd care enough to have my temporary email private. If I cared enough I'd just use my real email.

If I had to guess, requiring that each email address be tied to an individual person would allow NBox to stay off "temporary email address" blacklists. It's a privacy service essentially, not an anonymity service. Same reason why credit card masking services are legal, but Visa/MC/etc wouldn't allow a mass-shared CC number.

It will not keep NBox off blacklists. I've been using sneakemail for this for like fifteen years (and they do not offer a free service), and I've run into a number of sites that ban their domains anyway. Adafruit, for example, bans their domains.

Re: Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

#45

Post by amenod »

carc1n0gen wrote: post #40
toddmorey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail allows you to create unlimited unique addresses by using the + symbol. so you could do: username+trello@gmail.com. It's worked well for me for a few years. The only downsides I see are that (very few) sites still complain about the perfectly legal + symbol and some sites / bots are probably starting to reverse engineer that since it still exposes your username. But so far, I've yet to have a single site or serv…

Not a Gmail specific thing. That's something you can do with email in general.

I believe it is Gmail specific. Cursory search reveals that sendmail does that too, but I don't think it is specified in RFC. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

#46

Post by ballenf »

carc1n0gen wrote: post #40
toddmorey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail allows you to create unlimited unique addresses by using the + symbol. so you could do: username+trello@gmail.com. It's worked well for me for a few years. The only downsides I see are that (very few) sites still complain about the perfectly legal + symbol and some sites / bots are probably starting to reverse engineer that since it still exposes your username. But so far, I've yet to have a single site or serv…

Not a Gmail specific thing. That's something you can do with email in general.

Not really, according to the spec the '+' can be interpreted as part of the email address. The approach gmail takes seems to have gained widespread adoption, but it's not mandated by the spec.

Believe I saw this on HN recently: http://haacked.com/archive/2007/08/21/i-knew-how-to-validate...

Re: Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

#47

Post by maccard »

bigtunacan wrote: post #41

I think this is a good idea, but pretty poorly executed again. Another user commented that you could just register your own domain and do this; that's great for the average hacker news reader, but not so great for the average Joe so a service like this (if done correctly) would be pretty convenient. Things that jump out right away as bad about this NBox. 1) It just auto generates an email for me. That's going to be a…

Agree with all your points except your last. Many websites and services will disallow email addresses with + in them (and they're normally he ones I don't trust, like insurance comparison ones)

Re: Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

#48

Post by bdav24 »

mgberlin wrote: post #33

So if you shut down I no longer receive any emails I have signed up for?

Hi mgberlin, that's a valid concern, I tried to answer it there: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/nbox#comment-483412

Edit: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/nbox/comments/483328

Re: Show HN: NBox – Sign up anywhere without giving your email address

#50

Post by huhtenberg »

bdav24 wrote: post #48
mgberlin wrote: post #33

So if you shut down I no longer receive any emails I have signed up for?

Hi mgberlin, that's a valid concern, I tried to answer it there: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/nbox#comment-483412 Edit: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/nbox/comments/483328

Working link - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/nbox/comments/483328
Post reply on HN