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Receiveee.com - disposable email address

receiveee.com

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Re: Receiveee.com - disposable email address

#91

Post by peterhost »

josscrowcroft wrote: post #86

Question for business owners/founders: how do you feel about people signing up for your services with these throwaway email addresses? On the one hand, I respect people's privacy and right to use whatever email address they like. On the other (more relevant) hand - I sometimes need to contact users who violate terms and conditions that their access may be switched off (I'd never do this without contacting them 2-3 ti…

Thoughts ? Well, ...We (supposedly) live in a free country.

Analogy: When one fucks his/her neighbor's wife/husband (no, just kidding, nobody ever does that IRL), one at least draws the curtains, or goes rent a motel room 500 miles from home. It can lead to legal problems, big loss of money, and shattering a whole family (hurting real people for real), but no jurisdiction in north america or western Europe would sent someone to jail for that.

So... Signing into your new shiny service with a dupe email ? You bet i will. All the more if it's free. And that's just the beginning. It's time people realize their "profile" is as private as their "privates". Don't let anyone profile you for free. Your profile is worth more than that, right ?

That answers your question ?

(Btw nothing personal, as for the "illegal" stuff hapening on your service, it's mostly your problem, alas:( and that's not the easiest part. As long as you wish to profile users, you cannot securely (as in security by design) offer them privacy, and hence will run into the kind of troubles you allude to)

Re: Receiveee.com - disposable email address

#92

Post by josscrowcroft »

peterhost wrote: post #91
josscrowcroft wrote: post #86

Question for business owners/founders: how do you feel about people signing up for your services with these throwaway email addresses? On the one hand, I respect people's privacy and right to use whatever email address they like. On the other (more relevant) hand - I sometimes need to contact users who violate terms and conditions that their access may be switched off (I'd never do this without contacting them 2-3 ti…

Thoughts ? Well, ...We (supposedly) live in a free country. Analogy: When one fucks his/her neighbor's wife/husband (no, just kidding, nobody ever does that IRL), one at least draws the curtains, or goes rent a motel room 500 miles from home. It can lead to legal problems, big loss of money, and shattering a whole family (hurting real people for real), but no jurisdiction in north america or western Europe would sent…

Interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing.

I think the adultery metaphor is a little far-fetched, or perhaps irrelevant, but I understand that privacy is as serious an issue as those things you mentioned.

Perhaps a better approach for startups/businesses is to inform users (perhaps with some kind of UI-friendly alert) that it's OK for them to use your service with a fake email for up to one week at a time (or etc.) - kind of as a trial - after which their account will be deleted.

This shows that you're happy for them to try the service out with no obligation - but if they won't use a 'real' email address, they wont get a 'real' account.

I invert-quote 'real' because, obviously, it's just as possible for them to use a throwaway gmail account.

Re: Receiveee.com - disposable email address

#93

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

nwh wrote: post #52
chockablock wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... But why should the 'password' URL be so similar to the mail address. Doesn't this mean that if I know your mail address, I can fairly easily guess the secret URL to let me see that inbox? (Granted that in the most common use case, if I know the email address, I probably know what's in the inbox, since I am likely the person who sent the message. But still, why not make these 2 different random strings?) A coup…

Yeah, the developer is going to want to fix that quick smart. At a complete guess they are two strings being generated in quick succession from the same seed, and they both happen to be very close. End result is that I can guess your email.

Also email addresses are in really tight set and easily guessable. So that system should be fixed in general. Not just for address / password issue. But also getting proper address distribution.

Re: Receiveee.com - disposable email address

#94

Post by josscrowcroft »

pi18n wrote: post #87
josscrowcroft wrote: post #86

Question for business owners/founders: how do you feel about people signing up for your services with these throwaway email addresses? On the one hand, I respect people's privacy and right to use whatever email address they like. On the other (more relevant) hand - I sometimes need to contact users who violate terms and conditions that their access may be switched off (I'd never do this without contacting them 2-3 ti…

I'd be fine if people signed up with these to try it, but they should use a permanent address if they want to continue using it. I would have no sympathy at all if they lost their account.

Fair play. I suppose the key thing is I've been able to strike up some really good relationships with users and customers by knowing their email addresses - but clearly users of throwaway email accounts aren't going to be open to that kind of communication anyway.

Mainly I've noticed a distinct correlation between spam signups/service abusers and throwaway email accounts.

Re: Receiveee.com - disposable email address

#95

Post by garrettdimon »

josscrowcroft wrote: post #86

Question for business owners/founders: how do you feel about people signing up for your services with these throwaway email addresses? On the one hand, I respect people's privacy and right to use whatever email address they like. On the other (more relevant) hand - I sometimes need to contact users who violate terms and conditions that their access may be switched off (I'd never do this without contacting them 2-3 ti…

My feelings are that trust is a two-way street. If people don't trust us with their email address, I don't think it's fair for them to expect us to trust them with an account on our service if they provide a fake email address.

If they are serious about evaluating our product, they can provide a real email address. If they aren't very serious or inherently don't trust us, then I'm willing to miss the opportunity of having them as a customer.

I respect their privacy, because we don't spam, sell, or abuse any of these email addresses ever, but I find it hard to trust anyone with an account on our service if they use a fake email address. Personally, when I sign up for services, I find it helpful to gauge the company based on how they use my email. If they automatically start sending me marketing materials the next day, that tells me a lot, and I'll generally cancel the service and report all of the subsequent marketing emails from them as spam. The only way to do that effectively is if I use a real email address.

Do people use these fake inboxes for any reason other than trying to prevent or cut down on spam? Am I overlooking some key aspect of allowing people to use these email addresses?

Re: Receiveee.com - disposable email address

#97

Post by sirn »

jrockway wrote: post #88
sirn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still ban Mailinator by simply resolving DNS (or even only MX record) and reject if it matches 72.51.33.80.

That will only work if you know exactly how your entire mail stack will handle resolution and you re-implement it exactly on your frontend. Consider this case: Resolving not-mailinator.whatever.com returns: not-mailinator.whatever.com. 86400 IN MX 10 a.bad-mailserver.com not-mailinator.whatever.com. 86400 IN MX 10 b.bad-mailserver.com not-mailinator.whatever.com. 86400 IN MX 10 c.bad-mailserver.com not-mailinator.wha…

Interesting, I know this is a bad idea, but: what if I connect directly to SMTP servers returned from retrieving MX records then send `RCPT TO: ` and see if it passed or error with 550? My guess is there will be another whole range of issues involving open relays and servers that happened to not return 550 on nonexistence mailbox?

(I'm not trying to block Mailinator, just some exercise for myself.)

Re: Receiveee.com - disposable email address

#99

Post by rubergly »

vidyesh wrote: post #69

These are the services I use quite often when I need a disposable email id / fake inbox. http://mailinator.com/ http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html https://www.guerrillamail.com/ http://www.dispostable.com/ http://dudmail.com/ http://getairmail.com/ http://mailcatch.com/en/disposable-email http://spambox.us/ http://www.yopmail.com/en/ https://ssl.trashmail.net/ http://www.fakeinbox.com/ http://www.fakemai…

Which is your favorite? This is a great list, but hard to pick out the best from just reading all of these sites.

Re: Receiveee.com - disposable email address

#100

Post by nwh »

garrettdimon wrote: post #95
josscrowcroft wrote: post #86

Question for business owners/founders: how do you feel about people signing up for your services with these throwaway email addresses? On the one hand, I respect people's privacy and right to use whatever email address they like. On the other (more relevant) hand - I sometimes need to contact users who violate terms and conditions that their access may be switched off (I'd never do this without contacting them 2-3 ti…

My feelings are that trust is a two-way street. If people don't trust us with their email address, I don't think it's fair for them to expect us to trust them with an account on our service if they provide a fake email address. If they are serious about evaluating our product, they can provide a real email address. If they aren't very serious or inherently don't trust us, then I'm willing to miss the opportunity of h…

> If people don't trust us with their email address, I don't think it's fair for them to expect us to trust them with an account on our service if they provide a fake email address.

I've not used a single website that hasn't flooded me with "email newsletters", "promotions" and "reminders". Even my damn utility companies (each on their unique addresses) both sold and spammed the address I gave them with the stuff.

There is no trust.

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