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Comment by tengbretson | Hacker News Reader

Just buy a random cheap domain and use cloudflare email routing.

Most people in this thread probably have the money and technical skills to buy a domain and set everything up, but it misses the point: this is supposed to be "infrastructure" that everyone can use without any hassle (and likely for free), rather than private to an individual.

Of course, like others have pointed out, shared "temp email" services are more likely to be blocked.

This misses the point entirely. Most of the time when I need a temporary email address I just want to see some content that's hidden behind a sign up form. Going through the effort of buying a domain, configuring it, etc is the last thing I want to do in that situation. I want a site that will give me an address for 2 minutes so I can complete the sign up process and then go on with my day.

I don't think the suggestion was to set up your own throw-away email domain every time you need a throw-away email. Set it up once, then use it as needed. This is what I do. Sure I had to 'go through the effort' initially, but its not that much effort and I use the domain for other testing and temporary purposes as well.

In that case, how is this any different from e.g. signing up with a new account on Gmail/Outlook/etc? Why do you need to buy the domain and jump through all the other hoops?

>In that case, how is this any different from e.g. signing up with a new account on Gmail/Outlook/etc?

Some people like to create dozens (or hundreds) of disposable emails because they just need it for a single purpose (e.g. downloading a pdf whitepaper that's hidden behind an email sign-up). The email address is truly ephemeral and they don't want to create a whole new Gmail/Outlook inbox just for that. There's also UI/UX friction in Gmail/Outlook workflow of multiple screens to create a new inbox instead of being a convenient one-click like the disposable email services.

Also, Google and Microsoft puts a limit on the max # of new email accounts. They don't explicitly publish the max number but it depends on various heuristics such as your residential ip address, country, etc. E.g. some users only got up to 4 gmail accounts tied to a phone number. Others got 10 before being cut off. There are rate limits so one can probably get more accounts if creating them is spread out over multiple days.

Using one-click disposable email services or using your own domain to create unlimited email aliases lets one go beyond the limits of free Gmail/Outlook accounts.

Yeah this whole concept I agree with and it's actually what I brought up earlier in the comment tree. However what I still don't get is why you would choose the domain setup over one of very many free services where you get an address with a single click.

Gmail requires verification with a phone number, so assume all of your gmail accounts are linked

I think the idea was to do this once and use the mail everywhere you need it, not to do the setup every time you need a throwaway email.

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