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Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

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Re: Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

#81
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with this and I think the right approach is to simply not require visitors to give up their email accounts if they don't want to. If you want to block a malicious attacker, then you can use a captcha. A serious malicious attacker wouldn't have a problem paying a few dollars to buy a domain, creating a catch-all address and if he wants to take it one step further he can even have it look like a legitimat…

Fuck captchas

I'd rather fill out a captcha when I sign up than having to drag emails to spam on a daily basis so I can find emails that are actually important.

Re: Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I would pay for temp email service, or be bothered to set up open source one by myself. But if I could buy a throwaway domain name from company that specializes in temp emails as a package deal, then I would be tempted.

Right, that actually sounds like a decent idea and since the users would then have verified themselves with their payment details, it would reduce the risk of abuse.

Yup. And I don't think I would care too much about the actual domain, because, well, it would be a throwaway domain. It could be some random characters even. Which means you could possibly buy very cheap domain names in bulk, and re-sell them with low retail price, and profit the difference. The temp email service that you would provide "for free" would be the reason to buy from you.

Re: Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aliases you can discard are ad blockers for emails, disposable services are for bots, scams, and fraud. If you know the space, you'll be aware CAPTCHAs are trivially defeated today, regardless of the provider. I certainly agree people shouldn't be asked to provide an email if it's unnecessary, but again for the issue of bots, scams, and fraud, you generally need some sort of unique relatively hard to get many of iden…

I've come to the decision to charge $5/year for a site I'm going to put online in the next year... only to cover the transaction fees and mostly actual costs. If it takes off, should at least pay for itself and discourage fake accounts. But not every site/service will get that many people to even pay that much. On the latter bit... not sure if I completely disagree with that take as well. As much as I also dislike SS…

I think that completely depends on what the service is, but I don't think users would have anything against paying a few dollars if they find the service valuable, especially now when there are so many payment processors available.

Best of luck with the service also!

Re: Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I would assume most of them are doing, yes. In this day and age I don't understand why they wouldn't be able to just use a headless browser instead of doing it manually - has labor really become this cheap?

Captcha and rate limiting solutions are extremely good at stopping completely automated signups. It's far easier to pay someone in India a few bucks to sign up for a hundred accounts so you can do card testing than it is to run a server and write software for it. Hell, most of these people probably aren't even programmers.

I think that's for the small players though as this should be pretty slow, expensive and have the risk of the "employees" stealing the data (the business they are in is practically stealing so I don't think they have high morals).

Re: Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

#85
post #2

Do you have a commercial interest or is this just for fun or a kind of public service?

Just for fun. It started with me getting annoyed with SHEIN as they sent out spam to me and their unsubscribe link was set to localhost (127.0.0.1 - they are still using this last I checked) and in the same time period I found a suitable domain at an auction so I thought I'd give this a go.

I was wondering whether you had ever considered developing an alias email service instead of temporary email? Many users who use temporary email services may soon be blacklisted. Personally, I believe that an open-source service such as Addy (previously AnonAddy) has a brighter future. I am not a technological specialist, therefore I can just mention on the user side.

Regardless, I appreciate your efforts to help the community. I wish you good health and success.

Re: Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for fun. It started with me getting annoyed with SHEIN as they sent out spam to me and their unsubscribe link was set to localhost (127.0.0.1 - they are still using this last I checked) and in the same time period I found a suitable domain at an auction so I thought I'd give this a go.

I was wondering whether you had ever considered developing an alias email service instead of temporary email? Many users who use temporary email services may soon be blacklisted. Personally, I believe that an open-source service such as Addy (previously AnonAddy) has a brighter future. I am not a technological specialist, therefore I can just mention on the user side. Regardless, I appreciate your efforts to help the…

If I'm not misunderstanding you, the same should go for aliases as they will be flagged as disposable addresses as well. I also noticed that Addy allows users to send emails through it, which is a risky process as it requires close monitoring so spam isn't sent out through the service.

I will take a closer look at this and see if it's possible to improve it in some way.

Thanks for the kind words also and the same to you! =)

Re: Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that actually sounds like a decent idea and since the users would then have verified themselves with their payment details, it would reduce the risk of abuse.

Yup. And I don't think I would care too much about the actual domain, because, well, it would be a throwaway domain. It could be some random characters even. Which means you could possibly buy very cheap domain names in bulk, and re-sell them with low retail price, and profit the difference. The temp email service that you would provide "for free" would be the reason to buy from you.

Got it, this could perhaps work and the downside would however be that the user wouldn't have complete control over the domain, unless DNS control is provided and before I can say the word, I'd be a domain name registrar.

I think it's cool idea though and I might give this a shot, thanks for the idea and if I do implement this then feel free to contact me through the form and I'll set "lifetime" account up for you!

Re: Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

#88

Most such services are blacklisted, or very soon to be blacklisted. You can use Gmails and rotate them, and use "." "+" "number" tricks though, but typically, use Gmails is the way to do.

That's another way yes and I've actually seen another site do this, but I wasn't able to find it in my browser history.

Maybe you are referring to https://www.emailnator.com/, it utilized that trick

Re: Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering whether you had ever considered developing an alias email service instead of temporary email? Many users who use temporary email services may soon be blacklisted. Personally, I believe that an open-source service such as Addy (previously AnonAddy) has a brighter future. I am not a technological specialist, therefore I can just mention on the user side. Regardless, I appreciate your efforts to help the…

If I'm not misunderstanding you, the same should go for aliases as they will be flagged as disposable addresses as well. I also noticed that Addy allows users to send emails through it, which is a risky process as it requires close monitoring so spam isn't sent out through the service. I will take a closer look at this and see if it's possible to improve it in some way. Thanks for the kind words also and the same to…

Simple Login (SL), Addy (AD), and DuckDuckGo Email Protection (DDG) are the 3 alias email services I use. Both SL and AD can send and receive. DDG only receives. You can disable the sending direction and simply allow the forward service to run. I believe you will be able to handle this technological challenge. SL and AD are free for 10 aliases, but AD also includes PGP in the free tier. DDG allows for unlimited aliases but does not support PGP; nonetheless, it is free.

How great would it be if you could combine the benefits of such services?

I appreciate your time.

SL: https://simplelogin.io/

AD: https://addy.io/

DDG: https://duckduckgo.com/email/

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