The impossible task of blocking disposable email signups | Hacker News Reader

The impossible task of blocking disposable email signups

ruky.me

5 pointsrukshn6 comments

> Temporary emails are like burner phones, they are not attached to a user and the email address and the inbox. They are good for the users to try out a service, but they provide no value for the service.

I disagree with this. If someone is using a free email service, there's a good chance they want to try it. Perhaps they like it. So, it is connected to a user's interests, and connected to their desire for privacy at the trial stage.

Perhaps give a hint on a password recovery page, or subscription page, that a disposable email address will lead to an unrecoverable account, or similar.

> They will use up space by creating an account for the user on the service

It's not a lot of space, is it? Do bounce tracking to see anything undelivered. Tier emails through those that login again less (or at all) and have a different message for whatever tranche of users you put them into and seems effective, and this probably reduces fees or potential to be listed as spam for anyone that gets them but is uninterested.

Why can't users sign up with a real email account and maybe delete the account if not needed?

They don't trust you. What might you do with that email address, aside from sending email explicitly requested (opt-in and desired) by the user?

Too many people have betrayed trust. This is why we can't have nice things.

Exactly this. Burner emails can still be read if the user needs to reset their password. It just makes it easier for the user to make sure their email doesn’t get abused, sold, lost by the site’s owner.

I will only use my real email on sites that are relatively well known and that provide services that I want to get updates for, or that provide some team/social usage and I expect people to try to find me by it.

I have a couple of domains with catch all emails that I use to sidestep the blocking the op is attempting. I have the emails stored in 1Password and generate new ones for every site the same way I do passwords. It is very often than some of these one-off emails will start receiving spam or being contacted for different reasons than where the email was originally used in.

Because you may be bugged by the service forever.

I signed up with the Christian Science Monitor, a news outlet. Decided I didn't care for it, and "closed" my account.

Continued to get email offers. Not even "come back at this low, low price." Emails that assumed I still subscribed.

Went through the "unsubscribe from all emails" dance.

I still get email from CSM.

It doesn't matter their motives or competency, you take a certain risk when you give up your true identity to the internet.

If you give them a real email account as they sign up, they'll have one.

So for example, I want to sign up at tuti.study and you generate a random email address like j9u6iilejixzs3f6ba9k6stoo@tuti.study for me.

Then I would have a real email account. If you want, you could restrict it to sending email to/from the service. You could use Zimbra for it I suppose.

If that isn't good enough, then sorry, I have to suspect you are planning something nefarious.

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