Disposable addresses...
 

I know some people like creating short term disposable addresses. I had thought a while back of creating a "Disposable Address" screen. Basically it would be similar to the aliases screen, but rather than explicitly entering an address, you'd have a section where you could enter a "Display name", a "End on date" and then a click something like "Create disposable" button. It would create an alias and a personality (with the display name you specified) set to automatically be deleted after the given date.

Rather than using standard FM domains, I actually bought a domain specifically for this a while back, maildispose.com

Anyway, what I'd like to do here is open up for some discussion on whether people would use such a feature, how they would like it to work, comparison to other systems, etc.

Rob

The first thought that comes to mind is if it could either suggest a user name if the one you enter is already taken or generate a random one for you. For example, if I try to create chipperATmaildisposeDOTcom, it could say, "would you like to use chipper99999 where 99999 would be a number from 00001 to 99999 incrementing each time.

By the way, it looks like now that the redunancy issue has been addressed, you are making good on the promise to try to roll out new stuff for 2007. :)

Have you decided on any of the following yet?

Account level for use?
How many allowed?
Can you delete them?
Can you choose indefinite (until deleted)?
What if there is no available Personality?

Sherry

Chipper: I had thought that people would want pretty much "random" ones, rather than any hint of their username. Yes it would mean copying + pasting the address, but I thought that's how must people used disposable ones?

Sherry: No, hadn't really thought about those issues yet to be honest. With regard to levels, I think all might get the feature, though only 1 or 2 for guests and many more for full/enhanced. I think deleting one at any time should be a definite yes. Also when they're deleted (either explicitly or automatically, the corresponding personality is deleted as well). Indefinite (no specific end date) sounds sensible as well. Not sure about the no personalities left issue, probably create it, but let people know a corresponding personality wasn't created.

Rob

I'm definitely one who wouldn't want any part of my username in it. When you say random are you referring to how spammotel does it? Like mlkgxcydf or will yours have vowels in them?

Sherry

I had thought purely random letters (+ possibly numbers) thrown together.

Oooo, this looks nice though.

http://search.cpan.org/~tjenness/Cry....04/PassGen.pm

I tried it out, and got it to generate 20 words between 5 and 9 chars long. Here's what it came up with:

Of course each time you run it, you get different "words", but the nice thing is they look like plausible words, they're just statistically generated though. Neat.

Rob

Would be nice if had some of the features of Kasmail . com
See there -- kasmail . com -- how the main features below function.


Get a disposable email
--- Expires
--- Comment

[Manage] My emails
--- [Can] Bookmark this shortcut to your email generator
--- --- shortcut: --- --- Works with Safari, Firefox, Netscape, Mozilla, IE 5
--- --- --- Just drag and drop this button to your bookmark bar  [has a Demo]
--- --- --- --- [demo uses quicktime player]

Events log
--- Accepted mails
--- Blocked mails
--- Address management
--- Account admin

-- Bill

I prefer the completely random email address provided in www.Sneakemail.com to the use of user name with addition as in www.e4ward..com
I would not want the address to expire automatically - just that I can cancel it at will. This would be a very nice addition to FM.

I love that sooo much better than spammotels. If we could type in what we want then it wouldn't be any different than more aliases. I think it's great that we don't have to think up one of our own (just to be told it's not available 20 or 30 times). :)

Sherry

Recreate the Wheel?
 

Rob,

If you're looking for a challenge, by all means give it a go, but this functionality is already provided at www.spamex.com, although you have to pay to use the service.

Ah, yes I know there are other services like this, in fact, there's different services for just about every feature FM already has :) The point is it's adding features so you can turn to FM as a one-stop shop.

In this case, I think adding disposable addresses is a *fairly* easy thing to do that adds a feature people would like and currently go elsewhere for.

Rob

some dns providers have a way of doing this. They basically register a different email address every x days which is configurable to publish with your domain name info.

Maybe you could just always have a rolling disposable address per user?

for me it would be handy if I could have:
feb2007_(random no)@maildispose.com

that way you could say how long it lasts for me. If i wanted to use the address in february07 it would be a matter of just using that one address.

or would people rather have multiple active addresses?

With Kasmail . com I have multiple active as often I get one when giving address for newsletter, etc.

That way if I start getting junk mail at that 1 non-expiring disposable address I just go to Kasmail and deactivate or delete it.

Othewise, if not abused, that 'disposable' address remains permanent.

-- Bill

I am a big fan of the idea. I have used two of these in the past, www.spamex.com and Yahoo Plus. Spamex allowed me either to ask for a specifc address at spamex.com or xemaps.com (spamex backwards), or to generate a random one. This worked well enough for me, I used a sequencing like L306A001, L306A002, etc. and generated a few in advance to have available on the fly. The only problem for me was that at the lower user level, the size limit on the message was rather low.

Yahoo Plus has what I consider a neater feature. You specify a base for the disposable addresses, let's say "mbase". Then you can ask for any address of the form mbase-amazon (at) yahoo.com, mbase-vendor2 (at) yahoo.com, etc. Mail is not accepted at the base address mbase (at) yahoo.com or any combination not predefined. I really like this way of doing it.

It would be really great if you could implement disposable addresses for virtual domains. For example, if you did something like Yahoo I would specify a base, say "mbase", and you would accept anything I put in the system in the form mbase-vendor (at) mydomain.net, and refuse mbase (at) mydomain.net and any addresses of the form mbase-notdefined (at) mydomain.net if I have not defined it. These addresses would be refused even if I have a catchall for the domain. You could refuse at initial smpt receipt, saving bandwidth.

I use a few disposable email address sources, spamgourmet and sneakemail most frequently. and I'm happy with both of them. OTOH if I could create and use disposable addresses within Fastmail (my main email provider), it would save me a couple of clicks each time I need a new one.

So, my vote is: nice to have, but easily obtainable from elsewhere.