Comments on: Pick. Lock. And Load.

Pick. Lock. And Load.

limitedpie — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:16:49 -0800

"Pick. Lock. And Load. It's like flicking a booger at spam." (from linkfilter)

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:36:43 -0800

Q. This sounds pretty insecure. What if I send important emails with sensitive super-secret information in them to mailinator?
A. Then you are a stupid-head. That isn't what this is for.

Clever idea. A good solution for a very limited set of problems, when you want a truly throwaway email address. The post could have been more descriptive, though.

By: SealWyf

SealWyf — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:50:54 -0800

The email equivalent of a dead-drop. I like it. I just need to figure out what to use it for.

By: muckster

muckster — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:52:30 -0800

I wish they didn't do the booger thing. I haven't had breakfast yet.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:54:47 -0800

Another alternative, which works somewhat differently, is SpamMotel. Create a spammotel address which basically forwards any mail to that address to your "real" email account. You can go back and deactivate the spammotel address at any time. The advantage of spammotel over mailinator is that the created address really is "yours"--no one else can get to it--and it's active as long as you need it to be. The disadvantage is that you have to trust spammotel enough to give them a "real" email address, while mailinator is truly anonymous (at least until you get to the level of IP tracking).

By: greengrl

greengrl — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:55:53 -0800

I quite like the booger flicking animation (that's one big booger, though). Then again, I had lunch awhile ago. I don't have any reason to use it at present, but I will definitely keep it in mind... Cool idea.

By: adampsyche

adampsyche — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:56:05 -0800

I haven't had breakfast yet. Well, lock, pick, and load! It is a cool idea, but I wouldn't know what to use it for. If you are signing up for something that has to send you a username/password, you may want that to be secure. It's fun to put random names in the box, though.

By: Nauip

Nauip — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:57:43 -0800

DevilsAdvocate - bigfoot.com The problem is, with these types of services is that once the address is found the spam will come in by the pounds (that's a lotta electrons!). As for Mailinator, that's spiffy-keen-deluxe.

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 10:59:55 -0800

Ah, such an image... boogers and spam. I think I'll skip lunch today, thanks.

By: VulcanMike

VulcanMike — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:02:33 -0800

Please keep in mind that if you shoot off a test mail real quick to an obvious address @mailinator, anyone else guessing the account name will see your real address with that test message.

By: Espoo2

Espoo2 — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:18:57 -0800

Another alternative, which works somewhat differently, is SpamMotel. Only spam motel has the worst interface possible, and is far too much trouble.

By: r1ch

r1ch — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:34:56 -0800

Only spam motel has the worst interface possible, and is far too much trouble. Try SpamGourmet then - I use it a lot, but I virtually never even have to visit their site. It's well worth giving it a go.

By: dopamine

dopamine — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:35:25 -0800

I thought this is what Hotmail was for.

By: a_green_man

a_green_man — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:41:43 -0800

I'm using SpamGourmet, a SourceForge project. Easy interface and setup and your unique handles self-destruct after 1-20 messages. I'm trusting them for now...no breaches so far.

By: sodalinda

sodalinda — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:44:11 -0800

Please keep in mind that if you shoot off a test mail real quick to an obvious address @mailinator, anyone else guessing the account name will see your real address with that test message.

ah my friend, that is what anonymous remailers are for...I am about to have lots of fun. mahahaha.

By: Galvatron

Galvatron — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:51:32 -0800

Sneakemail works well for creating forwarding addresses that can be deleted at any time. It sounds like the idea is the same as SpamMotel, but perhaps the UI is a bit more functional...

By: mister e

mister e — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:58:46 -0800

Another vote for SpamGourmet. Been using it for at least a year or so with no problems. Plus they mention pancakes on their tshirt.

By: mnology

mnology — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 12:03:16 -0800

Yet another vote for SpamGourmet as my spam fighter of choice. Along with the SpamBayes plugin for Outlook.

By: beagle

beagle — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 12:25:53 -0800

I'm wondering how long it will be before some of the sites requiring e-mail address registration get wise and respond to any address @mailinator, spammotel, etc. with "Please re-enter your actual e-mail address."

By: mnology

mnology — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 12:32:18 -0800

As far as the e-mail validation forms getting wise, SpamGourmet has quite a few alternate domains. Organizations are also invited to share their domains for use.

By: arto

arto — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 12:57:20 -0800

I'm a bit curious as to what the non-spam-dodging uses of this might be. It seems to offer some good potential for a temporary autonomous zone-type situation--arrange a bunch of people to meet Friday at midnight, say, and mail whatever they have to say to someaddress@mailinator.com. Maybe that's the future of fileswapping, post-RIAA-suit?

By: pekar wood

pekar wood — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:11:59 -0800

I typed in my email address "booger" All I got was spam

By: Tubes

Tubes — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:18:17 -0800

I've also been using Sneakemail for some time. The interface is quite simple and the service is very capable. It takes me just a moment to create a disposable address for a web form. Now, being able to dream up an address on the spot and create it later, ala Mailinator, is extra cool. I believe this is something that Mailshell can also do, and more securely -- though I haven't had a chance to try it out.

By: eddydamascene

eddydamascene — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:34:28 -0800

What a fantastic way to harvest working email addresses!

By: RavinDave

RavinDave — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 22:47:54 -0800

Haven't read the article. Don't intend to read any of the discussion here. The "booger" thing was distasteful.

By: walrus

walrus — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 02:06:40 -0800

list of disposable email services

By: lupus_yonderboy

lupus_yonderboy — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 05:15:53 -0800

address@mailinator.com already has a Nigerian spam letter.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 11:21:15 -0800

Yeah, I guess SpamMotel does have a poor interface--maybe it's just that I've been using it so long that I've grown accustomed to it. Looks like sneakemail does the same thing. The difference between SpamMotel/sneakemail and SpamGourmet is that addresses created by the former are active indefinitely--until you manually disable them--and SpamGourmet has a maximum number of emails you can receive via each address, after which it is automatically disabled (you can manually disable it earlier, but you can't extend it). There are valid uses for both, but I tend to prefer the SpamMotel/sneakemail method in most cases. YMMV. The problem is, with these types of services is that once the address is found the spam will come in by the pounds It's possible, yes. But spammers would need a huge amount of bandwidth. SpamMotel addresses are 12 random letters--that's nearly 10^17 possible addresses. (That's also one of the disadvantages of SpamMotel--if you want to create your own, easy-to-remember address, SpamMotel is not for you.) Right now I have about 60 active SpamMotel addresses. Even if ten million people used SpamMotel and had a hundred active addresses each, a spammer attempting random SpamMotel addresses would have only one out of every hundred million addresses actually delivered.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 11:36:37 -0800

(you can manually disable [a SpamGourmet address] earlier, but you can't extend it). Whoops, it seems I was mistaken about that. From the SpamGourmet FAQ:

Note: as of June 8, 2001, you can add more messages to ('refill'?) an existing disposable address by going to advanced mode, clicking the view/edit link, locating the address (they're sorted by age, newest to oldest), clicking the 'word' of the address, then increasing the number of remaining messages and clicking the update button. Each message still has a max of 20 messages at a given time.