Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nbox.notif.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 212 posts

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

#131

Post by daxelrod »

jjnoakes wrote: post #87
daxelrod wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A white pattern is an idea that I'd considered but never actually tried implementing.

It has the advantage of being able to spontaneously create email addresses when signing up for things, while still blackholing most guessed addresses.

I like this idea a lot.

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

#132

Post by alien_robot »

morninj wrote: post #98
nicholashead wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I do, and it's worked beautifully for me. (domainname)@mydomain.com is pretty standard/easy, and storing it in password manager makes it even easier.

Same here. Sometimes I'll also add the date when I entered the address in a form. For instance, the last time I registered to vote, I used YYYYMMDD-ca-voter-registration@mydomain.org. During the last election cycle, I caught a few California politicians harvesting my address and adding it to their email lists.

Ironically the CAN-SPAM Act only prevents commercial entities from doing this, however shady the practice may be. Political emails are protected free speech and AFAIK the means by which addresses are obtained is irrelevant.

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

#133

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #113
talove wrote: post #95

I've had a catch-all for *@mydomain.com forward to my primary email address for 10+ years. In that time I signed up for services and websites with [domain]@mydomain.com thinking I'd catch all those dirty scoundrels selling my email address and have an easy way to filter unwanted mail. But you know what really happened? I wound up with hard to remember email logins and caught less than a handful of services sharing my…

I did that, too. Used a catch-all and just subbed to things with a new e-mail address, relying on the catch-all to put it all into one box. Big mistake. First off, I got FLOODED with e-mail bounce-back spam because spammers send e-mail with forged From: headers and I'd get all the errors. Second, I discovered that nobody is actually selling my e-mail address except for one gaming forum I used years ago. Not even Face…

> Not even Facebook has sold my e-mail address.

Won't FB be among those least likely to sell your email address? FB has tons of ways to make money using your data. Your email address offers very low marginal utility over all the rest of your data.

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

#134

Post by awqrre »

talove wrote: post #95

I've had a catch-all for *@mydomain.com forward to my primary email address for 10+ years. In that time I signed up for services and websites with [domain]@mydomain.com thinking I'd catch all those dirty scoundrels selling my email address and have an easy way to filter unwanted mail. But you know what really happened? I wound up with hard to remember email logins and caught less than a handful of services sharing my…

Doesn't BCC render this solution mostly useless anyways?

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

#135

Post by pmontra »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #113
talove wrote: post #95

I've had a catch-all for *@mydomain.com forward to my primary email address for 10+ years. In that time I signed up for services and websites with [domain]@mydomain.com thinking I'd catch all those dirty scoundrels selling my email address and have an easy way to filter unwanted mail. But you know what really happened? I wound up with hard to remember email logins and caught less than a handful of services sharing my…

I did that, too. Used a catch-all and just subbed to things with a new e-mail address, relying on the catch-all to put it all into one box. Big mistake. First off, I got FLOODED with e-mail bounce-back spam because spammers send e-mail with forged From: headers and I'd get all the errors. Second, I discovered that nobody is actually selling my e-mail address except for one gaming forum I used years ago. Not even Face…

You could have solved the second problem by storing the email with the login and password in a password manager. Maybe they were not a thing yet when you started this experiment.

The third problem is more serious. I use Thunderbird. I googled and there are a couple of addons that makes it easy to edit the from address without having to create new Thunderbird identities.

https://github.com/absorb-it/Virtual-Identity

https://freeshell.de//~kaosmos/index-en.html#editsender

Both are somewhat unsafe, one because of the site certificate, the other because of the download site.

The first problem looks like a showstopper tough.

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

#136

Post by turbohedgehog »

pmontra wrote: post #135
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did that, too. Used a catch-all and just subbed to things with a new e-mail address, relying on the catch-all to put it all into one box. Big mistake. First off, I got FLOODED with e-mail bounce-back spam because spammers send e-mail with forged From: headers and I'd get all the errors. Second, I discovered that nobody is actually selling my e-mail address except for one gaming forum I used years ago. Not even Face…

You could have solved the second problem by storing the email with the login and password in a password manager. Maybe they were not a thing yet when you started this experiment. The third problem is more serious. I use Thunderbird. I googled and there are a couple of addons that makes it easy to edit the from address without having to create new Thunderbird identities. https://github.com/absorb-it/Virtual-Identity h…

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/correct-i...

This is the one I use.

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

#137

Post by beefsack »

talove wrote: post #95

I've had a catch-all for *@mydomain.com forward to my primary email address for 10+ years. In that time I signed up for services and websites with [domain]@mydomain.com thinking I'd catch all those dirty scoundrels selling my email address and have an easy way to filter unwanted mail. But you know what really happened? I wound up with hard to remember email logins and caught less than a handful of services sharing my…

> I wound up with hard to remember email logins

You could easily argue this is a symptom of a different problem.

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

#139

Post by bdav24 »

monista wrote: post #138

I tried to "Create my nbox" (or "Generate an address") and it sent me to Chrome addons site. Is it Chrome-only web service?

Hi monista, nBox is heavily based on Chrome at the moment, but a Firefox extension is coming and mobile apps may follow.

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

#140

Post by bdav24 »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #113
talove wrote: post #95

I've had a catch-all for *@mydomain.com forward to my primary email address for 10+ years. In that time I signed up for services and websites with [domain]@mydomain.com thinking I'd catch all those dirty scoundrels selling my email address and have an easy way to filter unwanted mail. But you know what really happened? I wound up with hard to remember email logins and caught less than a handful of services sharing my…

I did that, too. Used a catch-all and just subbed to things with a new e-mail address, relying on the catch-all to put it all into one box. Big mistake. First off, I got FLOODED with e-mail bounce-back spam because spammers send e-mail with forged From: headers and I'd get all the errors. Second, I discovered that nobody is actually selling my e-mail address except for one gaming forum I used years ago. Not even Face…

Hi Sohcahtoa82, selling might not happen that often (fortunately), but data leaks happen very often (see http://breachlevelindex.com/ for example)
Post reply on HN