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Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email

mailhero.io

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Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email

#71

Post by throwanem »

Spammers often strip dot aliases in my experience. This doesn't seem like doing anything to solve that problem. I mean, if citigroup.joe gets dot-stripped, then citigroup@mailhero.io gets that spam instead of joe, but odds are joe will just end up getting somebody else's spam anyway, so it's not really much of a win unless you're careful to pick a username that won't be used as an alias, and then you have the problem of having to give out addresses like citigroup.rkcj92o8I@mailhero.io.

Not seeing the value prop over Mailinator.

Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email

#72

Post by dijit »

throwanem wrote: post #71

Spammers often strip dot aliases in my experience. This doesn't seem like doing anything to solve that problem. I mean, if citigroup.joe gets dot-stripped, then citigroup@mailhero.io gets that spam instead of joe, but odds are joe will just end up getting somebody else's spam anyway, so it's not really much of a win unless you're careful to pick a username that won't be used as an alias, and then you have the problem…

Would they be stripped? The traditional alias separator is a '+' (dijit+hackernews@google.com) and periods are part of email names, thus the address itself: (jan.harasym@google.com)

Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email

#74

Post by nmalaguti »

I used to use a service like this called endjunk.com. A few years ago it shut down without warning and I found I couldn't receive emails or update my username for several services.

I tried rolling my own for a while, but it was painful to make sure my mail server was always up to date and patched. I also had issues with forwarded mail being marked as spam by my email provider.

If this service becomes popular and starts forwarding lots of spam, it can result in the entire domain being blacklisted, especially since users never send replies to these addresses.

Don't rely on free mail services to get mail you might care about some day.

Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email

#75

Post by mhw »

schneems wrote: post #17
schneems wrote: post #15

I made something almost exactly like this 6 years ago. Called whyspam.me Good luck.

Almost forgot I open sourced it when I took it down. https://github.com/schneems/WhySpam

The domain has now been taken over by scammers, so it might be worth removing the links from the github project.

Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email

#76

Post by gradschool »

Jaruzel wrote: post #50

Like 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…

I'm thinking of doing something similar and hope to learn from your experience. I have two questions. (1) Was it easier to write your own MTA than to use the milter interface to Postfix or other mature MTAs that support it? (2) How would you set up the MUA to use the right alias in the return address when users reply to a message instead of leaking their real email address? (e.g., Would you need another lookup table somewhere that maps (user,recipient) pairs to user aliases?)

Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email

#77

Post by trickster_ »

gingerlime wrote: post #70

Love this idea, and the copywriting on the page is absolutely brilliant! I hand-rolled my own solution a while back on my own server, simply creating a random forwarder and "tagging" it with a description, so I can always go back and lookup what fw839kopa4 was for... It's a ugly hack, but works. My ugly hack has the added benefit of not accepting just any email address, but only those I explicitly defined. On the fli…

Thank you for the compliment about the copywriting! I did try to put effort into explaining what Mailhero actually does and to make sure that I explained why I made it instead of pretending to be somebody else. :)

Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email

#79

Post by throwanem »

dijit wrote: post #72
throwanem wrote: post #71

Spammers often strip dot aliases in my experience. This doesn't seem like doing anything to solve that problem. I mean, if citigroup.joe gets dot-stripped, then citigroup@mailhero.io gets that spam instead of joe, but odds are joe will just end up getting somebody else's spam anyway, so it's not really much of a win unless you're careful to pick a username that won't be used as an alias, and then you have the problem…

Would they be stripped? The traditional alias separator is a '+' (dijit+hackernews@google.com) and periods are part of email names, thus the address itself: (jan.harasym@google.com)

Well, I've gotten spam that had it stripped; the name was a bogus one that I gave out in combination with a specific dot-aliased address, but the address in the To: header was without the alias. I can't say how often it happens, but with major mail providers (including Google, IIRC) widely known to support arbitrary dot aliases for throwaway addressing, it seems like a reasonable ploy from the spammer's point of view.

Re: Mailhero – a more permanent temporary email

#80

Post by dijit »

throwanem wrote: post #79
dijit wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would they be stripped? The traditional alias separator is a '+' (dijit+hackernews@google.com) and periods are part of email names, thus the address itself: (jan.harasym@google.com)

Well, I've gotten spam that had it stripped; the name was a bogus one that I gave out in combination with a specific dot-aliased address, but the address in the To: header was without the alias. I can't say how often it happens, but with major mail providers (including Google, IIRC) widely known to support arbitrary dot aliases for throwaway addressing, it seems like a reasonable ploy from the spammer's point of view…

Google definitely do not support dot aliasing, I've had email addresses for gmail with dots in them and so has my mother. Thats dangerous if you allow people to sign up for email addresses with dots and then use that as an alias seperator. So dangerous I would argue they wouldn't do it.
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