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How to get gmail.com banned (2011)

mailinator.blogspot.com

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Re: How to get gmail.com banned (2011)

#31

Post by ori_b »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #27
paulmd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many sites won't accept email addresses with + in them, because many devs have extremely wrongheaded ideas about validation. I used to have a first.m.last@university.edu address and that one was touch-and-go as well due to the fact that the mailbox had two .'s in it. I actually had to file a support request to get Amazon Student to accept it, even. Nobody from a university with that scheme ever registered before? For…

My favorite is e-mails with three dots in them. Which is actually not a valid address - the RFC specifies that you must have a valid textual character between dots[1]. However, because of poor decisions by Japanese telcoms, a substantial chunk of their users have 'e-mails' associated with their mobile phones with three dots, breaking goddamn every sensible validation script. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#se…

There's only one sensible validation script: "Send an email with a confirm link".

Re: How to get gmail.com banned (2011)

#32

Post by kpcyrd »

cdubzzz wrote: post #18
nkassis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could use + in the first part of email such as: youremail+blahblah@example.com to create throwaways. most sites consider those to be different email address then youremail@example.com for account purposes but email service, who respect the rfc, will threat them as the same.

I've always found this to be such an odd option. If the concern is people spamming you or selling your email address, how does this really help? Anyone intentionally doing nefarious things can just add a simple regex to strip the garbage.

The parent mentioned QA, it would work for that. For antispam you could add a filter for emails to the direct address without suffix. Personally I prefer aliases, but I think they are very rare on freemailers.

Re: How to get gmail.com banned (2011)

#33

Post by michaelhoffman »

paulmd wrote: post #19
nkassis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could use + in the first part of email such as: youremail+blahblah@example.com to create throwaways. most sites consider those to be different email address then youremail@example.com for account purposes but email service, who respect the rfc, will threat them as the same.

Many sites won't accept email addresses with + in them, because many devs have extremely wrongheaded ideas about validation. I used to have a first.m.last@university.edu address and that one was touch-and-go as well due to the fact that the mailbox had two .'s in it. I actually had to file a support request to get Amazon Student to accept it, even. Nobody from a university with that scheme ever registered before? For…

What's worse: some sites accept email addresses with + in them and then years later, they stop working, and you can't log in to fix your email address.

Ask me how I know this.

Re: How to get gmail.com banned (2011)

#35

Post by GauntletWizard »

ori_b wrote: post #31
GauntletWizard wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite is e-mails with three dots in them. Which is actually not a valid address - the RFC specifies that you must have a valid textual character between dots[1]. However, because of poor decisions by Japanese telcoms, a substantial chunk of their users have 'e-mails' associated with their mobile phones with three dots, breaking goddamn every sensible validation script. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#se…

There's only one sensible validation script: "Send an email with a confirm link".

Sadly, if you're sending e-mail sanely, your mail provider likely validates recipients, and will be annoyed at you if you send them recipients they think are bogus.

Re: How to get gmail.com banned (2011)

#36

Post by codexon »

Mailinator seems to have added some other anti-scraping detection.

Unfortunately it does not work very well as I was not scraping mailinator, but still somehow got IP banned. Fortunately my ip has changed. But they definitely have some strange and overzealous method now.

Re: How to get gmail.com banned (2011)

#38

Post by giancarlostoro »

paulmd wrote: post #19
nkassis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could use + in the first part of email such as: youremail+blahblah@example.com to create throwaways. most sites consider those to be different email address then youremail@example.com for account purposes but email service, who respect the rfc, will threat them as the same.

Many sites won't accept email addresses with + in them, because many devs have extremely wrongheaded ideas about validation. I used to have a first.m.last@university.edu address and that one was touch-and-go as well due to the fact that the mailbox had two .'s in it. I actually had to file a support request to get Amazon Student to accept it, even. Nobody from a university with that scheme ever registered before? For…

All this time I've been telling people my email has a . in it, I had no idea I could remove it and still login.

Re: How to get gmail.com banned (2011)

#39

Post by mintplant »

paulmd wrote: post #19
nkassis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could use + in the first part of email such as: youremail+blahblah@example.com to create throwaways. most sites consider those to be different email address then youremail@example.com for account purposes but email service, who respect the rfc, will threat them as the same.

Many sites won't accept email addresses with + in them, because many devs have extremely wrongheaded ideas about validation. I used to have a first.m.last@university.edu address and that one was touch-and-go as well due to the fact that the mailbox had two .'s in it. I actually had to file a support request to get Amazon Student to accept it, even. Nobody from a university with that scheme ever registered before? For…

>For the record, the gold standard for email validation is "send a confirmation link and see if they click it". Don't try and get fancy.

But make sure you have some sort of rate limiting set up, so malicious users can't take advantage to spam someone's mailbox (and get your server blacklisted).

Re: How to get gmail.com banned (2011)

#40

Post by matt_kantor »

nkassis wrote: post #13
zer00eyz wrote: post #2

"Thousands of people use Mailinator everyday, so clearly, its a useful tool that many sites accept" How many of you would have an outright revolt on your hands from your QA/QE folks if you banned mailinator? I think everyplace I worked would experience this same issue if we did this.

Could use + in the first part of email such as: youremail+blahblah@example.com to create throwaways. most sites consider those to be different email address then youremail@example.com for account purposes but email service, who respect the rfc, will threat them as the same.

> Could use + in the first part of email [...] email service, who respect the rfc, will threat them as the same.

I'm not aware of any RFC that says that mail sent to a+foo@example.com should go to the same mailbox as mail sent to a+bar@example.com (nor am I aware of any RFC that forbids this). I thought that GMail made up that feature and other vendors followed suit since users find it handy.

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