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Show HN: Maskmail – anonymous email address service

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Re: Show HN: Maskmail – anonymous email address service

#21

Post by scrollaway »

shaneos wrote: post #19
jedberg wrote: post #2

Nice idea, but I suspect if it gets any traction, many services will just block maskmail addresses. That's why mailinator uses 100s of different domains and makes it really hard to get a list of all of them.

(co-creator of Maskmail here). That's in our plan for future updates, at the least allowing users to opt in to using many different domains. Many other features in the pipeline too, please feel free to send any ideas you have to support@maskmail.net, or tweet at us @mask_mail Hope you find value in the service!

Will you add support for Bring-Your-Own-Domain? This HN commenter is definitely interested.

Re: Show HN: Maskmail – anonymous email address service

#22

Post by shaneos »

scrollaway wrote: post #21
shaneos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(co-creator of Maskmail here). That's in our plan for future updates, at the least allowing users to opt in to using many different domains. Many other features in the pipeline too, please feel free to send any ideas you have to support@maskmail.net, or tweet at us @mask_mail Hope you find value in the service!

Will you add support for Bring-Your-Own-Domain? This HN commenter is definitely interested.

We hadn't considered it, but it's an interesting idea. We'd have to think through how to make it work, there'd be some interesting interplay with routing and mail servers.

Re: Show HN: Maskmail – anonymous email address service

#24

Post by zingmars »

Tepix wrote: post #12
alexmat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a spammer, wouldn't it be trivial to just run a regex on email lists looking for that pattern and then harvesting the results? Or is this like the old joke where you don't have to outrun the bear, just your friend?

Well, one more reason not to use gmail i suppose. If you have your own mailserver you can configure a different delimiter.

Sure, but then you get 100 other problems that come with self-hosted e-mail servers that might not be worth the hassle.

Re: Show HN: Maskmail – anonymous email address service

#27

Post by krageon »

jedberg wrote: post #13
Tepix wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a different delimiter (using the option recipient_delimiter in postfix on my mailserver) and have yet to see a spammer figure it out. YMMV.

That works great if you control your own mail server, but most people don't these days. :)

The reason for this is of course that it's a complete pain to work with the large email providers (say, you want to send an email to gmail) if you have your own service. Email has been far from truly decentralised for a while now.

Re: Show HN: Maskmail – anonymous email address service

#28

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

I don't understand one thing: the whole point of a disposable e-mail address it's that you just can use it instantly and never reveal your real e-mail addresses to anyone. That's why Mailinator got so popular. But in order to use Maskmail I have to register - what's the point? I was thinking I could give it a try because it's new so it will work for a while for sites that for some strange reason block disposable e-mail addresses, but registering simply defeats the purpose.

Re: Show HN: Maskmail – anonymous email address service

#29

Post by jpalomaki »

jedberg wrote: post #10
jlis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. I'd let users pay for using their own domains.

That could be interesting, but then what do they need you for? I can already do that with gmail. I just set up a domain on google apps and then tell it to deliver any email address to my main email. In fact I do that already (see my profile).

Price, convenience. Google Apps is not free. For this particular use case you might be able to provide better user experience. Maybe integrate the custom domain registration and automatic DNS config to the UI.

Re: Show HN: Maskmail – anonymous email address service

#30

Post by jpalomaki »

Tepix wrote: post #7

Why not just append a unique marker to your mail address? Some services support this. For gmail i believe you can use "+" as the separator: I.e. your email address is victim8384@gmail.com and you want to give your email address to a party called "spammer", you give them victim8384+spammer@gmail.com instead. Once you start receiving spam to that address, you block it.

At least some years ago this did not work out so well due to broken email validators that did not accept + in the address.
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