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Mailinator needs a .edu domain.

Someone did that to me w/ Skype. I tried to login, requested a password reset, logged in and then disabled the account.

The original poster should probably just do this - log into the account (maybe by resetting the password) and then reset the email address to something else - maybe you can find out from the web interface the name and address and phone number of the person who screwed things up - call them and tell them their new password. If the system requires some validation to reset the email address, use an address at https://mailinator.com/ or another similar place.

I understand what they are, I have them too. I just don't understand how applying that exact concept in a single interface is immediately such a terrible idea.

(For the ones you're just going to let die, mailinator is a handy option.)

This is where services like Mailinator are invaluable. Just create a throwaway email address for each of all these stupid logins.

I take it a step, further, though: I own my own domain and have made it a practice of using a custom email address for each site I need to log in to, i.e. sitename@mydomain.com . This way, each login is unique *and* I can track who is giving out my email address as spam.

Yet the emails all go to one central inbox, so it's not inconvenient to get/search the confirmation messages.

They are only asking for your email address so that they can sell it to spammers and spam you themselves.

Use http://www.mailinator.com/ and thwart their evil plans...

Isn't this hypothetical situation just fraud?

Maybe not - he put the randomizer into a standalone URL, which just returns some text.
(Try it a few times, and do a view page source: http://mailinator.com/randomdomain.jsp )
The "clever" part is that it just returns some text, nothing labeled as an "alternate domain".
The URL suggests it is some random domain; it doesn't say anything about alternate or mainstream.
The text might be a domain.
It might be a pie recipe.
*shrug*
Anyway, his main page uses that standalone URL and labels that page labels the result as an alternate domain.

So suppose it was fraud.
Next question - who would prosecute? :-)

"Why do you feel it was fraud?"
"Because we asked for an alternate domain and they gave us gmail.com."
"Was that the only request you made for a 'random domain'?"
"Probably."
"Wasn't that request just one in a batch of 2,000 you made during a 10 minute window on July 17th, 2010?"
"Uh, I don't recall."
"Does this server log help your memory?"
"Oh. Hmm. Yeah, that might have been us..."

The "hypothetical complaining users" you quoted are those running scrapers, not actual Mailinator users. And yes, clearly the scrapers were stupid enough to load http://mailinator.com/randomdomain.jsp; otherwise they wouldn't have run into the garbage data.

They'll load http://mailinator.com/ discard the main iframe, and then parse the randomdomain.jsp iframe.

...and if they hit it more than x times per second/minute/whatever, they could still get the posioned results.

Personally, I'd be ass enough to display ";DROP DATABASE *;" for a fake alternate domain as one of the commenters on TFA had mentioned, just to see if anyone complained.

Your alternate domain list displayed 'gmail.com'!
Hi Fred, no it doesn't. Just reloaded the homepage 10 times, nothing like that. all the best.

or I bet another would be like:

Yahoo.com? What is this some kind of joke?
Sorry, did you mean to email this to Carol Bartz? Not sure what you're talking about.

The article says some of his genuine users will notice the erroneous on the main page.

No scraper is stupid enough to just load http://mailinator.com/randomdomain.jsp
They'll load http://mailinator.com/ discard the main iframe, and then parse the randomdomain.jsp iframe.

Your alternate domain list displayed 'gmail.com'!
Hi Fred, no it doesn't. Just reloaded the homepage 10 times, nothing like that. all the best.

or I bet another would be like:

Yahoo.com? What is this some kind of joke?
Sorry, did you mean to email this to Carol Bartz? Not sure what you're talking about.

The article says some of his genuine users will notice the erroneous on the main page.

No scraper is stupid enough to just load http://mailinator.com/randomdomain.jsp
They'll load http://mailinator.com/ discard the main iframe, and then parse the randomdomain.jsp iframe.

If you read the horribly long blog, they don't say that (The here's one such alternative message) on the page scripts were scraping from.
It's an iframe to http://mailinator.com/randomdomain.jsp
Normal users get legit answer but if you hammer that page it serves up "other" results.

Most sites needed confirmation on e-mail, so you just can't make something up.

There's always Mailinator for quick disposable e-mail addresses.

http://mailinator.com/

You're welcome.

Get an account, use http://mailinator.com/ and you can post as AC all you want, no captchas. You lazy ass.

Some friends in Cairo would like to bypass some of the online censorship measures. I've quickly suggested some things (below) to consider overnight. What have I missed?

Anonymous connection:
No:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/help-eff-research-web-browser-tracking

But:
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/

Also:
http://www.hotspotshield.com/

And services like:
http://filesharefreak.com/2008/10/18/total-anonymity-a-list-of-vpn-service-providers/
but verify on the ground.

Only if they understand the tradeoffs:
http://www.privoxy.org/
https://techstdout.boum.org/TorDns/

Avoid random lists of anonymous proxies or DNS servers.

To secure the computer:
Use a popular boot disk that leaves nothing behind, e.g.:
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

Remove metadata:
http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=144E54ED-D43E-42CA-BC7B-5446D34E5360&displaylang=en
and similar for other files they may deal with.

Delete/wipe files securely.

Many uses:
http://mailinator.com/
http://www.hushmail.com/

Consider:
http://www.disconnectere.com/
and its analogues

I never use a real email address for forum signups. Mailinator is my friend.

Not sure why anyone would register with any of the Gawker sites, but why on earth you would ever give your actual email address to half of these websites is beyond me. If they require you to provide an email address to register, use a throwaway address from something like mailinator or the other sites like it. Yes, someone could take over the account if the email address is posted, but for almost all of those sites the account serves no purpose outside of being able to post.

I'm not even sure why they require email addresses. Reddit is one of the few sites I've seen get it right. They don't require an email address to register, but warn you that if you don't include one there is no way to recover the password for the account.

It's not like their server couldn't log the IP along with the anonymous comment. And what about services like 10minutemail, mailinator, or guerrila mail? I doubt hunting down someone by one of those email addresses would be any easier than just using whatever IP they posted under.

Two solutions to this:

#1 - bugmenot.com
#2 - mailinator.com

I haven't used my real e-mail for a (useless) website in something like 7 years.

Mailinator? Works fine...

Also, DynDns makes it really easy to register a (free) subdomain (e.g. “anon.doesntexist.org”), and set the MX Hostname for mail routing to “mailinator.com”.

Send an e-mail to something@anon.doesntexist.org, then go to http://mailinator.com/maildir.jsp?email=something to check it. (Yes, that is an actual DynDns address whose MX hostname is set to mailinator.com.)

"Then you can kiss your account goodbye."

You mean my account at mailinator.com?

This ladies and gentlemen is why one always uses a fake id and a throw away email account when any Internet service requires login.

Also mailinator.

Holy crap, mailinator is great! Thanks (though you could have included a link).

And their FAQ is fricking hilarious.

This is why you always give a fake address when asked

Personally, I prefer FakeNameGenerator combined with Mailinator. It is fast, easy, and it gets around those pesky sites that attempt to match street names, zip codes, and the like that can be bothersome when making up random information off the top of one's head.

I think the real question is why she filled out a "registration form" with any sort of real information. Automatically filling out forms on the Internet with real information is a bad habit. Unless they are billing you, they don't need to know anything about you.

That's what disposable e-mail addresses are for.

and http://www.mailinator.com/ for everything else.

for a PDF version you'll have to give up an email address.

Fortunately, those aren't hard to come by.

I taught my nine year old brother to use Mailinator.

The problem is that a lot of sites require you to actually verify the e-mail address. When you sign up, it sends you an e-mail with a link you must click before your account is valid. Until you click on it, you can't log in.

If you put a fake e-mail address in, you don't get access. Thus, the needs for services like Mailinator. But Me Not is an end-run around this entire process. You don't have to register anything; valid account information is already provided for you.

Use mailinator.

I take it a step further and use mailinator. All you do is enter a username, no password. (obviously you should take pains to make your email unique so no one else uses your inbox)

All you do is type in say, cowboyneal@mailinator.com on some service you suspect will spam you. Then you can get the validation url or whatever it is the site sends, and you're good to go.

Forget the catchall mailbox. http://mailinator.com/ has a great system for disposable email addresses, with the caveat that you shouldn't use it if your personal information is on the line. But if you just need to give an email address to a site and get something in return that's not sensitive, it's fantastic.

I store my password at mydomain.com/password.txt so I can just copy/paste when I'm remote.

there's always http://mailinator.com/

> 100,000 times repeated, different story.

Regal Cinemas has a comment page Regal Cinema Comments Go tell them what you think.

They require an email address use mailinator.com

If they happen to have a third one, they'll use something like Mailinator ...

Mailinator addresses are free and they don't expire. Which can be handy if you forget your password for some account you used them to sign up for

http://www.mailinator.com/

That would be two real addresses and mailinator.

Regarding BugMeNot, it's brilliant. As far as easy to use, I have the Firefox extension. It reduces using BugMeNot to a simple a right click on the username field (or whatever) and select "Login with BugMeNot." It automatically fills in the username and password, and submits the signon request. It saves me the time of going through the signup process with a null or fake email address, and it saves even more time and trouble when the signup process requires email confirmation.

If I'm wanting a bit more uniqueness than BugMeNot provides, I frequently use the Mailinator. It doesn't require me to create a throwaway account in advance, I can make up any address I like on the fly, such as player@mailinator.com, then I go and check their web site to answer the signup confirmation email. Don't use this for anything secure, as there is no security!

Finally, for those sites where I really do want to have a long term relationship (like Slashdot), I use Sneakemail to create a unique email address. If the website proves untrustworthy, I just delete that email address. I've had some Sneakemail addresses for over five years now!

Regarding BugMeNot, it's brilliant. As far as easy to use, I have the Firefox extension. It reduces using BugMeNot to a simple a right click on the username field (or whatever) and select "Login with BugMeNot." It automatically fills in the username and password, and submits the signon request. It saves me the time of going through the signup process with a null or fake email address, and it saves even more time and trouble when the signup process requires email confirmation.

If I'm wanting a bit more uniqueness than BugMeNot provides, I frequently use the Mailinator. It doesn't require me to create a throwaway account in advance, I can make up any address I like on the fly, such as player@mailinator.com, then I go and check their web site to answer the signup confirmation email. Don't use this for anything secure, as there is no security!

Finally, for those sites where I really do want to have a long term relationship (like Slashdot), I use Sneakemail to create a unique email address. If the website proves untrustworthy, I just delete that email address. I've had some Sneakemail addresses for over five years now!

Regarding BugMeNot, it's brilliant. As far as easy to use, I have the Firefox extension. It reduces using BugMeNot to a simple a right click on the username field (or whatever) and select "Login with BugMeNot." It automatically fills in the username and password, and submits the signon request. It saves me the time of going through the signup process with a null or fake email address, and it saves even more time and trouble when the signup process requires email confirmation.

If I'm wanting a bit more uniqueness than BugMeNot provides, I frequently use the Mailinator. It doesn't require me to create a throwaway account in advance, I can make up any address I like on the fly, such as player@mailinator.com, then I go and check their web site to answer the signup confirmation email. Don't use this for anything secure, as there is no security!

Finally, for those sites where I really do want to have a long term relationship (like Slashdot), I use Sneakemail to create a unique email address. If the website proves untrustworthy, I just delete that email address. I've had some Sneakemail addresses for over five years now!

Although I host my own domain and have a perfectly good mail server I use a hushmail account for business correspondence. My real email address is reserved for family and friends.

Everyone else gets either hotmail or mailinator - and I never check my hotmail account ;-)

A rough assessment of the last 30 days spam stored on my server suggests more than 75% comes from the USA.

A quick look at http://www.mailinator.com/mailinator/map.html shows clusters in the south (Memphis seems to be a hotspot) and on the east coast.

I don't know about Korea, but blocking Tennessee, Missouri and Florida would cut my spam in half. Blocking the rest of the USA would reduce it by 75%.

Type spam map into google image search to see how blatently obvious it is to see where the spam comes from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_e-mail_add ress

http://www.mailinator.com/
http://www.pookmail.com/

I know of at least two different sites which give out disposable e-mail addresses so I don't really understand why this is newsworthy.

http://www.spamgourmet.com/
You create an account and spamgourmet will bounce the mail to you. The syntax is: [word].[number of mails].[username]@spamgourmet.com. When the alloted number of e-mails has been used the mails will bounce unless you allow more through.

http://www.mailinator.com/
You just make up a string of letters and use those letters to view the account at mailinator. This is a truly disposable mail address since the inbox is open to anyone who chooses to look at the account. If the information is semiimportant you should choose a pretty random mail address.

what Mailinator has been providing for years.

I was curious as to how TMM stacked up against mailinator, my anonymous email of choice; mailinator has a time-limit of several hours, and its interface is slightly more elegant.

Whenever a site asks me to register before I can access content (and I don't mind my username/password being made public), I use http://www.mailinator.com/. You basically make.up.an.email.address@mailinator.com, and then head over to the site, type in your made up email address, and it shows you the last 5 (probably spam) messages it has received. Of course its totally unsecure (but that's sort of the point), so be careful what you use it for.