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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

#181

Post by eddyg »

aaronrenoir wrote: post #81
maccard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is definitely a pro-tip! Using a dot instead is a great idea and much less likely to be "auto-removed" by a smart harvester that strips "+" extensions.

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

#182

Post by JadeNB »

bdav24 wrote: post #153
JadeNB wrote: post #92

The FAQ says that it's not a disposeable-e-mail-generator, but the description of what it does makes it seem like that's exactly what it is. (Maybe it means that it doesn't generate random e-mail addresses from a shared pool?) I've been a satisfied user of SpamGourmet (www.spamgourmet.com) for years, and the only (argueable) downside I've seen is how upset customer-service representatives get upset while reading my a…

Hi JadeBN, you're right spamgourmet is very similar to nBox. Here are a few differences: - With spamgourmet the addresses are designed to expire after X emails, so it's intended for services you don't care about. - Once I know one spamgourmet address, I can try to guess other addresses of yours. - We don't ask for your personal email. If spamgourmet gets hacked, spammers will get your information.

Thank you for the reply; I think that this is a useful description of the advantages of your service. Just for purposes of completely accurate comparison, though:

> - With spamgourmet the addresses are designed to expire after X emails, so it's intended for services you don't care about.

This is configureable; it can be turned off entirely (allowing a trusted sender to send an unlimited number of e-mails to an address), or the allowance can be 'refreshed' (so that, after, say, 5 e-mails sent to an address, you can allow 5 more as a further probation).

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

#183

Post by pmontra »

garaetjjte wrote: post #152
pmontra wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why you need addons for it? Thunderbird allows to change From address by default. ("customize address" in identity combobox)

I never noticed that, thanks. I googled and found it's there since Thunderbird 45, April 12, 2016.

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

#186

Post by carc1n0gen »

amenod wrote: post #45
carc1n0gen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a Gmail specific thing. That's something you can do with email in general.

I believe it is Gmail specific. Cursory search reveals that sendmail does that too, but I don't think it is specified in RFC. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't have a source to a RFC, but all email's I've ever used let me do this. Including multiple different hosting services with my own domains, and my current work which is MS Exchange.

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

#187

Post by heliodor »

cottsak wrote: post #109
heliodor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I was thinking the same thing! Come back to me when it integrates with LastPass

That's the thing, it doesn't need to. Nbox fills the email text box with something random, and LastPass or 1Password takes it from there. It generates a password for you and asks you to save the login info for future use.

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

#188

Post by BeetleB »

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 toyed with the idea of using a catch-all, but couldn't get around the problem of having to occasionally send mails from the address (e.g. for customer support, etc - as another commenter mentioned).

Recently I came up with another solution that I know some have used:

Stick to one email address and have a whitelist. Anything not in the whitelist is "spam" (including irritating LinkedIn emails, etc). If I get email from anyone not in the whitelist, they get sent an email with a website link asking them to confirm their identity by submitting their email address. Once they do that, they are whitelisted and all their quarantined emails show up in my inbox.

The only remaining part is constructing that whitelist. I wrote a script to go extract all the From addresses and just dumped them in there. So people who've emailed me in the past will not deal with going to the website to confirm their identity.

If I get email from an entity I no longer want to see in my inbox, I press a keystroke to remove them from the whitelist. Likewise, if I go to my quarantine folder and see an email I'd like to whitelist, it's done with a keystroke.

Been using it for less than a month, and it is quite effective so far.

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

#189

Post by sr2 »

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…

Just make sure your catchall is renewed well into the next five years. Heck, you can do a 'rollover renewal' that lasts 10 years if you wanted.

This is to stop somebody eventually gaining control of the domain when it expires, setting up a catchall on it, and then being able to login to every single account you used with that address.

Some registrars protect a domain after expiration so nobody can hijack it and claim it as their own, but you often have to pay extra for this service.

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

#190

Post by kchr »

BeetleB wrote: post #188
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 toyed with the idea of using a catch-all, but couldn't get around the problem of having to occasionally send mails from the address (e.g. for customer support, etc - as another commenter mentioned). Recently I came up with another solution that I know some have used: Stick to one email address and have a whitelist. Anything not in the whitelist is "spam" (including irritating LinkedIn emails, etc). If I get email f…

> I toyed with the idea of using a catch-all, but couldn't get around the problem of having to occasionally send mails from the address (e.g. for customer support, etc - as another commenter mentioned).

You know, the sender header is just a text string... What stops you from putting whatever e-mail alias you registered with as sender, for those occasions?

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