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Comment by EwanG | Hacker News Reader

Why? It seems like you are escalating a war AGAINST your users. Most folks who use a disposable address are trying to make sure their main address doesn't become a fount of spam. If I continue to visit your site/service, then I will probably decide to "update" my address on my own for the convenience. Am I really being naive?

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You are being naive -- it really depends on the service. For trivial online services, a disposable email might be fine, but for anything that costs money, you're doing your users a disservice by letting them register with an email address that they won't be checking (and which could potentially get hijacked, if someone knew the address).

If a service prevents me from signing up with whatever email address I want, I won't be using it. It's one thing to discourage weak passwords, as that's a common mistake for people that don't know any better. It's another thing altogether to deny signing up with something like this, as they clearly will know the ramifications of doing so.

I have a website that gives freebies (=$$$) to new signups, so allowing throwaway accounts makes people do things like sign up for 100 accounts.

Not giving freebies is of course an option, but then there is goodwill lost on that end instead.

It sucks both ways. At least I don't spam my users, but they of course only trust that assertion so far and I certainly don't blame them - there seems to have been a significant rise in email marketing in the last 6+ months - probably some annoying YC startup or two making it much too easy for sites I signed up for at some point but really don't want to hear from send me email... Tsk, tsk ;)

Then just give the freebies to non-throwaway accounts. Now your users still have a choice, and you don't lose any goodwill (obviously, explain that throwaway accounts don't qualify).

This is on the same level as adding a CAPCHA if someone comment looks like spam.

You might not be naive, but you are probably mistaking the value of allowing sophisticated users to try in this way versus the value of getting an email that you can send weekly updates to.

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