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Comment by josscrowcroft | Hacker News Reader

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 times). Also, I might need to inform them that something has changed which might affect their usage. My service can be quite integral to a lot of apps, so to me that's an important feature...

Thoughts?

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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?

> 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.

> "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"

Solid justification for disallowing them. My service doesn't even send a reply-verification to users (but Free users get a CAPTCHA... sadly) and just assumes validity. Perhaps I ought to integrate it at some point, but personally I hate having to click to verify my email address. Comes back to trust, again.

If you don't need their email address why do you even ask for it? In my mind reply-verification is mostly for account recovery purposes. If they fat-finger their email address they will never know it until they also forget their password. At least, that is what I experienced on the one app I deployed that didn't verify email addresses (but did need to send notifications to them).

Why should a potential customer be willing to trust you with their email address? Perhaps you are very respectful of their privacy, but already their trust has been violated plenty of times by other, less honest companies. "One bitten, twice shy" and all that.

I'm not claiming that they should trust us. I'm only saying that it works both ways, and that we as business owners have a choice about whether to trust potential customers just as much as they have a choice about whether or not to trust us.

It might be anachronistic, but if a potential customer wants to begin a relationship with us with a lie, then of the two of us, I would think we have more reason to mistrust that individual than they have to mistrust us. Their mistrust is based on projecting bad behavior of other companies onto us whereas our mistrust is based on them actively beginning the relationship with a lie.

Of course, this decision may cost us some potential customers, but for now, that's something that we're willing to accept.

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)

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.

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.

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