Interesting concept. There have been a number of times when 10 minutes that others typically give hasn't been enough for me.
Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
51–60 of 91 posts
Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
#52I have been running a similar service for myself on my own exim mailserver for a couple of years now and very happy with it. Provided explanation on how to achieve this on my blog https://www.guidodiepen.nl/2013/02/catch-almost-all-in-exim-... Whenever an address is receiving too much spam, I just blacklist it at the server level, ensuring I don't have to filter it anymore in my mail client since the server won't eve…
That was a nice tutorial! I did something similar too before creating Mailhero. And regarding the confusion about stuff before the @-sign: I have gotten "Wow, you work here?!" a million times too... :)
Ditto, I get that a lot too. That pregnant pause on the other end of the line after you get as far as @...
What I have discovered as well, is that gmail/hotmail/yahoo addresses are so ubiquitous, that call centre staff get very confused when your email address doesn't end in one of the 'big three' domain names.
Also don't get me started on the problems I've had trying to explain that yes, .io is a valid domain ending for an email address...
Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
#53Like many of you, I've rolled my own interpretation of this solution. I've got a self-written MTA that supports any recipient prefixes on emails that are sent to @domain.com. It then firstly checks the RCPT TO: address (the _real_ TO address) against the email aliases assigned to all my users in the Active Directory/Exchange Server. Once that check is passed, it then runs the email through some custom blacklisting ru…
>The only downside is having to manually add new custom blacklist rules due to the adaptive nature of the spammers.
I wouldn't really call that a downside until AI is here.
Impressive work!
Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
#54Love the anecdotes at the bottom. I’ll add two of my own:
- Sent myself a photo from a Southern Californian theme park that starts with "D" and ends with a fireworks show, using a custom email address: No third-party spam, but my god their "unsubscribe" links (NOT that I ever subscribed) just don’t work, I got a promotion for everything vaguely Disney-related for a year until I blocked the address completely. Whoops, gave this one away!
- Signed up for a famous freemium file-syncing service whose name also starts with "D" using a custom email address, never used for anything else; that ended up in the hands of spammers.
Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
#55I have been running a similar service for myself on my own exim mailserver for a couple of years now and very happy with it. Provided explanation on how to achieve this on my blog https://www.guidodiepen.nl/2013/02/catch-almost-all-in-exim-... Whenever an address is receiving too much spam, I just blacklist it at the server level, ensuring I don't have to filter it anymore in my mail client since the server won't eve…
I have run a server with a similar setup for many years. And some people get really confused. It can be quite funny sometimes.
The best moment was my SO explaining to someone on the phone, why the email address included their company name.
Paraphrasing: If you get hacked or sell my email I will know it was you. So don't sell it, and make sure you stay on top of your security.
I used to contact companies by email after they leaked my throwaway email address, but I don't any more, because some got angry and others were just confused.
Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
#56With gmail, you can create a custom email for each service, like so: youremail+service@gmail.com Later on, if the service doesn't let you unsubscribe, or sells your email to other spammers, you can just set a filter to trash emails sent to youremail+service@gmail.com
Anyone with half a clue that is doing heavy marketing via email, knows to strip the stuff after the +. BTW, the + is part of the email specification, and technically any email server not supporting it is broken.
Although '+' is an acceptable symbol, there's actually nothing in the RFCs that mandates sub-addressing behaviour. The closest you'll get is RFC5233 that defines it for the Sieve filtering language. So although very common, sub-address behaviour is not a standards requirement and should not be presumed.
By "heavy marketing" I presume you mean spammers. If not, be warned, sub-address stripping will mean nondelivery in some cases and could trigger blacklisting via honeypots.
Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
#57I have been running a similar service for myself on my own exim mailserver for a couple of years now and very happy with it. Provided explanation on how to achieve this on my blog https://www.guidodiepen.nl/2013/02/catch-almost-all-in-exim-... Whenever an address is receiving too much spam, I just blacklist it at the server level, ensuring I don't have to filter it anymore in my mail client since the server won't eve…
I have run a server with a similar setup for many years. And some people get really confused. It can be quite funny sometimes. The best moment was my SO explaining to someone on the phone, why the email address included their company name. Paraphrasing: If you get hacked or sell my email I will know it was you. So don't sell it, and make sure you stay on top of your security. I used to contact companies by email afte…
Yeah I lost my preorder for PS4 over that issue, K-mart just cancelled my preorder because they thought my email address was suspicious. mind you this was at the time when you'd have to wait months for the machine to be in stock again. I spoke on the phone with their manager and there was nothing they said they could do about it. So I've never shopped there since.
Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
#58Very cool. Right now I'm using 33mail with a custom domain
Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
#59Is there a service that lets me send mail from such an email address as well?
Let's say I use this for my Amazon account amzn.myusername@mailhero.io and I need to get in touch with Amazon customer support. For verification they require me to actually send an email from amzn.myusername@mailhero.io.
Or another case: as soon as I have to actually send an email to a service I signed up for and use my real email address, that is then known to the service and could potentially be leaked.
Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email
#60Is there a service that lets me send mail from such an email address as well? Let's say I use this for my Amazon account amzn.myusername@mailhero.io and I need to get in touch with Amazon customer support. For verification they require me to actually send an email from amzn.myusername@mailhero.io. Or another case: as soon as I have to actually send an email to a service I signed up for and use my real email address,…
I am going to add that functionality soon. You will, of course, have to click the recaptcha for each message send... I hope everybody understands why. :)