Block disposable emails

What about disposable email address services who offer exclusive domains for paying customers? Are you going to characterize those addresses as "fake"? I see you are actually doing that now!<p>I know these evil disposable email address users and they are not the abusers you think they are. In fact a lot of them have been more abused by the sites you are providing a service to than vice versa.<p>There are better ways of combating abusers then just banning a domain, and would cause a lot less grief. A central repository of "fake" domains inevitably will cause false positives on a large scale and will cause a whole lot of grief to everybody.<p>Full disclosure: I came out with the first disposable email address service, as far as I know, and I'm quite certain I even coined the term "disposable email address", as obvious as it may seem, it wasn't at the time, and I can't imagine what you think of me!

I use sneakemail.com as a way of filtering mail and tracking email addresses I give out to web sites and mailing lists (/not/ as 'disposable' addresses), and both their domains (sneakemail.com and the newer snkmail.com) are blocked by this service.<p>Blocking these email addresses is counterproductive. The only site I've encountered in the past that blocked Sneakemail was Digg, and I didn't sign up as a result. They /may/ have blocked a few 'disposable' accounts with this strategy, but they /definitely/ lost at least one 'real' user because of it. In addition to this, I have no doubt that there were orders of magnitude more 'disposable' Hotmail and GMail addresses signed up for Digg that there would have been Sneakemail addresses, so they need to deal with the 'problem' of undetectable disposable accounts anyway.<p>Sneakemail is a great service, BTW. I hope stuff like this doesn't render it useless.

The goal should be attracting customers that want to read your emails. If they are using disposable emails, that means you do something wrong. Maybe you should skip email requirement?

Next week on HN, I'll unveil my new browser extension: block-sites-that-block-disposable-emails.com.<p>Why should I trust someone I've never heard of with my real email address? Trust is earned, and I am not going to use a service that requires a "real" email address.<p>Besides; I run my own email server... how do you even know I'm delivering your email to a file and not to /dev/null? You don't. This service is bullshit.

Any free email provider can be used for fake, one-time, temporary email addresses - it just takes a bit more time to register another one. It's just annoying when email is needed to create an account, and way more annoying when it filters email addresses for no reason.

And if a website enforces this, well, I didn't want to sign up anyway.

I can imagine several different PHB deciding to require that the developers use this.<p>The problem is that if the user doesn't want to read you email, they won't.<p>This service is like selling megaphones to advertisers - it doesn't make people buy your service/read your email but it does increase the profit for the megaphone suppliers.

This is starting to feel like an arms race. Next, there will be undetectable disposable emails, and then automatic detection of undetectable disposable emails.

I have a catch-all account for my domain. If I sign up for a service I use their domain as the user on the address I give out. E.g. facebook@mydomain.com.<p>The result is that all email that isn't personal nor directly related to my business gets sent to an account that I check once a day.<p>If an address gets spammy or, like the Epsilon situation, a service provider gets hacked I can block my account without consequence.

Here's a thought: instead of dealing with crap like this, what about a service for mailing lists that collects email addresses, and stores them internally. Companies wanting to reach customers can put the signup form as js on their websites, but never get the actual email addresses. The mailing list service passes the newsletters on to subscribers, who are free to click links and form a more direct relationship with the client company, but guarantees to users that:<p>1. It will never directly pass email addresses to the client company or any third party.<p>2. All unsubscribes will be respected immediately.<p>So you can sign up with confidence. The downside for the client company is it doesn't get those sweet, juicy email addresses. The upside - lots more signups, and no fake addresses.

One problem with a service like this is: how do I know if I can trust it with people's email addresses? How do I know that this site doesn't store the emails tested and sell them to spammers?

Hi<p>Kevin is right, also jrmg and most others from my point of view. I am the one who started the service discussed.<p>As in every topic there are at least two positions. I think in normal cases the service will help service providers to keep the userdatabase clean of temporary mail addresses. From the point of a user (and I am often only a user looking for services) it should also not be a problem to give a email address away if you trust the provider.<p>But I agree: In special cases acting as a user it is useful not to give someone the email address. Like a creditcard number.<p>From providers angle I would decline such email addresses in every case. Most of the services are free today - so the only return service is to have a communication channel to the user. It's clear for me not to spam my users as I treat them as customers.<p>It's up to you if and how you use the service. And hopefully most of you would like them.<p>But I know that not everyone is happy with that kind of abuse killing abuse killing systems ... (see jrockways new idea of block-sites-that-block-disposable-emails.com).<p>Best regards,<p>Gerold <a href="http://www.block-disposable-email.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.block-disposable-email.com</a>

<a href="http://www.block-disposable-email.com/response_codes.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.block-disposable-email.com/response_codes.php</a> says:<p><i>"MX does not exist": The corresponding domain does not have a mailexchanger (MX-DNS RR). Domains without a MX are not able to receive emails.</i><p>No! Lack of an MX does NOT mean non-deliverable!

Or you can use the old username+SOMETERMYOUFILTEROUT@gmail.com.

In Gmail, you can add arbitrary dots (.) to your email address and add filters based on it: f.o.o@gmail.com You can also append a plus-sign with arbitrary text on it: foo+asdfsdfaiugo@gmail.com Both will route mails to foo@gmail.com.<p>As said, you can add a filter to add a label to all mails to this address and skip inbox for them. That's what I do.