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

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

#81

Post by aaronrenoir »

maccard wrote: post #47
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)

If you are running your own mail server (the open web is not yet dead) you can change the `recipient_delimiter` to another character. Mine is setup with a period. misc.ycombinator@domain.com

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

#82

Post by bdav24 »

slg wrote: post #80
bdav24 wrote: post #2

Hi, I'm David, one of the developers of nBox. nBox generates for you an email address for each site, for free. - Effortlessly thanks to our browser extensions - Addresses are anonymous and private - Delete the addresses you don't want any more - Be notified according to your preferences on each email I'm looking to share the service. Any feedback is very welcome. Thanks!

My hesitation in signing up for any of these unifying products is the potential lock in. If I start using your service and eventually have dozens of sites directed through you, what happens when the product disappears? My question is therefore how do you plan to fund this indefinitely if it is "Just Free, Forever" and is unlimited? You say it is part of promoting your brand, but it looks like that brand (or at least…

Hi slg, that's a valid concern, here is a copy-paste of an answer I wrote earlier:

I tried to answer it there: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/nbox/comments/483328

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

#83

Post by slg »

ajnin wrote: post #79

Presumably if I don't want to receive spam emails I'm also unlikely to allow a website to send me notifications. I'm unlikely as well to install an extension for a very specific service I'm not going to use very often. Extensions are a privacy concern and consume memory needlessly. If I'm willing to give a fake registration email I probably don't care about privacy and this is just for throwaway anyway. I'm not going…

> Extensions are a privacy concern and consume memory needlessly.

This is somewhat tangential to your points, but I see this type of comment a lot. Chrome extensions are just renamed zip files that contain all the JS, HTML, and CSS for their extensions. It is easy to take a look at the source code if you have any privacy doubts. The author might try to obfuscate the JS, but it should be trivial to see if there are outgoing connections being made. Google also makes it simple to disable extensions with a couple clicks if you want to keep particular extensions disabled except when you are actively using them.

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

#84

Post by daxelrod »

_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.

I used to do this. The amount spam of mail I received to mailbox names I had never used started to dwarf my actual email. This is apparently made worse because spammers take the fact that these addresses will receive mail as a signal that they're valid, causing them to send more mail to them.

A couple of years ago, maintaining the blacklist passed the point where this was a viable technique for me.

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

#85

Post by bdav24 »

ajnin wrote: post #79

Presumably if I don't want to receive spam emails I'm also unlikely to allow a website to send me notifications. I'm unlikely as well to install an extension for a very specific service I'm not going to use very often. Extensions are a privacy concern and consume memory needlessly. If I'm willing to give a fake registration email I probably don't care about privacy and this is just for throwaway anyway. I'm not going…

Hi ajnin, thanks for your feedback.

> Extensions are a privacy concern and consume memory needlessly.

Yes, that's why we don't ask for any permission, so the extension only gets activated when you click on the button.

> I'm not going to give any personal info to a website I don't trust with my email in the first place

Everyone can get hacked, governments, big companies... so who do you trust enough to give your email?

> I also don't understand how this is not going to be blacklisted like any other anti-spam email service.

Some services might block our addresses some day, but that would be a mistake because nBox is not a disposable email service.

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

#86

Post by heliodor »

bdav24 wrote: post #54
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…

Hi bigtunacan, thanks for your feedback. 1) "That's going to be a pain in the ass to remember": the extensions are there so you don't have to. 2) "how do I login?": we're currently developing this side the service. 3) See 2) 4) We're planning on proposing mobile apps too. To put it into context, nBox is fairly new and we did not implement all our ideas before knowing if people were gonna be interested.

The service is fine as-is. It sounds like a perfect complement for a password manager like LastPass or 1Password. All the points brought up are addressed by the password manager: sync across multiple devices, use multiple browsers, etc.

A password manager generates random data for the password textbox. Your extension generates random data for the email textbox. Perfect!

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

#87

Post by jjnoakes »

daxelrod wrote: post #84
_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.

I used to do this. The amount spam of mail I received to mailbox names I had never used started to dwarf my actual email. This is apparently made worse because spammers take the fact that these addresses will receive mail as a signal that they're valid, causing them to send more mail to them. A couple of years ago, maintaining the blacklist passed the point where this was a viable technique for me.

This is why you might consider maintaining a white list or white pattern instead.

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

#88

Post by gmancruthers »

bdav24 wrote: post #54
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…

Hi bigtunacan, thanks for your feedback. 1) "That's going to be a pain in the ass to remember": the extensions are there so you don't have to. 2) "how do I login?": we're currently developing this side the service. 3) See 2) 4) We're planning on proposing mobile apps too. To put it into context, nBox is fairly new and we did not implement all our ideas before knowing if people were gonna be interested.

I've been wanting something like this for awhile to combine with my LastPass use. Now I can have different email addresses and passwords for everything.

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

#89

Post by slg »

bdav24 wrote: post #82
slg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hesitation in signing up for any of these unifying products is the potential lock in. If I start using your service and eventually have dozens of sites directed through you, what happens when the product disappears? My question is therefore how do you plan to fund this indefinitely if it is "Just Free, Forever" and is unlimited? You say it is part of promoting your brand, but it looks like that brand (or at least…

Hi slg, that's a valid concern, here is a copy-paste of an answer I wrote earlier: I tried to answer it there: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/nbox/comments/483328

I guess that is a fair answer. Thanks for responding.
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