Slashdot Mirror
Where Do Dummy Email Addresses Go?
ajain writes "Maybe a year and a half back or so, I started using someone@somewhere.com as a dummy email id in online blogs, guestboks, forums, and sundry pages. But then I started wondering what if someone actually tried to email me on that email address. I was sure that it would bounce because I assumed that there wouldn't be an actual email address like that. In any case, just for fun, I decided to google on someone@somewhere.com. And lo behold, there are some 4090 results! I have written a small article at my blog and a reader says NoOne@NoWhere.com is another contender. Do you use some common dummy email IDs too, to get around the privacy problem online? Isn't there a potential for malicious misuse of someone's email ID in this way?"
Poor owner of that address. These days, though, I use @example.com wherever possible because I know it won't go anywhere at all. It's not a bad idea for other people to use it when they can, either.
I always use asdf@asdf.com
seems I'm not alone:
http://www.asdf.com/asdfemail.html
http://www.asdf.com/whatisasdf.html
I used to use the ones you describe, as well as "fatchance@nospam.com." Then, I discovered Mailinator. This is pretty handy. You make up an address @mailinator.com. Mail can go there, and the address is "created" on the fly. Later, if you are really interested (say, a registration for a newspaper site), you can pick up the mail. After a few hours, the account is deleted.
The domain "example.com" is reserved for exactly this purpose.
However, I find that for cases where you can be reasonably certain your address is NEVER going to be used for legitimate purposes (such as cases like this where the context implies the address is useless and it will only be treated as real by harvesters), you can skip the middle man by using uce@ftc.gov
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
There are plenty of places you can safely point to. It's fair to assume that mailboxes at example.{com|net|org} are unmonitored. There's also me@privacy.net which bounces email with a polite notice that you don't want email from the sender. Spamcop provides the conspicuous nobody@devnull.spamcop.net, originally provided for users of their newsgroups but open to all and of course you can just use fake tlds like nobody@fake.invalid which will always be rejected before the email even leaves the spammer's servers.
If you do want to recieve email but only, say, once from a company then you'll be looking at SpamGourmet which provides simple, free, fowarding addresses that expire after X hits.
These days, I just use Mailinator. They offer throw-away email addresses for free and automatically delete any mail the account receives after a few hours. That way, I can actually confirm registrations and the like but don't have to worry about spam. And I do not bother innocent third parties, such as the nowhere.com domain owners.
RFC 2606 reserves domain names like example.com, so you can safely use those without hitting existing email addresses.
using another person as your dummy adress is pure EVIL. i was forced to abandon my main email adress because some moron used very extensivelly as a dummy address. and it was no coincidence, the address was too complex. before bayesian filtering, i had no other option than change my email and it is not an easy task if you have used for long time, you have printed ona various dead trees and so on
SHE does throw dice.
Use a domain less than 3 chars - can't exist, according to standards, so you won't be abusing anyone. If that's not allowed, use example.com (or .org, or .net), which was set up as a dummy domain to be used in examples.
The best way I've found, though, is mailinator.com. Every @mailinator.com account "exists" (is created as needed), and other than (perhaps) root, abuse, etc., they aren't passworded. So you don't even have to set up a junk account, just make up the address on the fly. Be sure to delete any emails with passwords in 'em ASAP, of course.
example.com was reserved by the IETF so that dummy email addresses could be used in examples. See www.example.com/
user@domain.com - 17,100.
The somewhere.com domain is registered by Speakeasy. I checked and found that there is currently no mailserver associated with somewhere.com, so in this case you lucked out and didn't hurt anyone with your misguided efforts. People using random email addresses are very much like people randoming shooting guns. The example.com, example.org, and example.net domains are safe to use for this purpose, see RFC 2606, Section 3.
is to use any LHS @example.com. This, by RFC, is guaranteed to belong to nobody.
example.com is set up for exactly thie purpose. See RFC 2606. .test .invalid .localhost are also mentioned in RFC 2606. .localhost may cause more fun when somone tries to mail spam to it.
JimBob Jumpback 1313 Mockingbird Ln. Anywhere, CA 90210 jimbob@jumpback.com 555-123-4567 Please feel free to use this for yourself.
"I usually use webmaster@ ..."
I prefer postmaster@[site]. Internet standards require postmaster be a working mailbox (not everyone follows the standards, but many/most do). I also find webmaster@[any-domain] tends to gets tons of dictionary-attack spam, thus making it more likely to be filtered already. Most (not all!) spammers filter out postmaster@[all-domains] (spammers may be stupid, but they're not *that* stupid). Finnally, postmaster@ is, I suspect, more likely to be read by people who care (sysadmins rather then marketing weenies).
"...and I check all of the "Email me adverts for all this shit!" boxes, too."
I never do that. I also check off whatever "opt-out" options the form offers. That way, they are encouraged to adhere to their own policies. If they do not spam unless you ask them to, then postmaster@ will not be spammed. If they send stuff without asking, then postmaster@ gets it.
Alas, more and more registration forms check for obvious things like a domain the organization already operates.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
fake@fake.com used to be my favourite, but I've recently found that many web sites wont accept input to domains like "fake" and "somewhere". I have resort to using addresses like fake@yahoo.com and the like to get past the validation.
Personally, I like fuck@you.com :).
In the UK, 1 is only illegal when you use a false identity for fraudulent purposes. You are not doing 2 if you use an @example.com address - there is no person at that address to impersonate. And 3 doesn't apply if the organisation in question doesn't send you an email. If you don't request that they send an email, then they are using their resources on their own initiative and you aren't misusing anything.
What you are probably doing is violating a EULA, but their legal standing is very questionable, especially when you aren't actually paying for the service.
So, at least in the UK you aren't going to get busted for using a fake account if you do it right. Using support@microsoft.com is a different matter, you could probably claim it's stalking or something.
IANAL...
I've always liked "no@spam.com". Google came up with nearly 5000 results for that.
For this, Mailinator is perfect.
http://wsulug.org
> Isn't there a potential for malicious misuse of someone's email ID in this way?
Yup, it is called a joe-job...
http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/J/joe-job.html
Someone asked me the difference between ignorance and apathy, I told them I don't know and I don't care.
If I'm posting to UseNet, I usually make up some alias to stick in front of @nowhere.com.
I sorta pity whoever owns @nowhere.com
(Actually, there is someone who owns @NoWhere.com, registered back in 1994 according to WhoIs. However, there are no NS, MX or SOA records so e-mail to that domain goes nowhere.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
What you need to do is write your script so that none of the user's input goes into the headers of the e-mail that gets sent to you. Hard-code the headers into the script. There won't be anything in it that absolutely has to come from a variable, anyway.
Then put all the user's input into the body of the e-mail, up at the top of the message.
When I had a catch all address with my own domain I would enter the site I was giving my email as the alias eg. osdn-7-11@mydomain.com, this way when I get spam from \/1a.gra Inc. sent through some relay I know who sold the address.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Somewhere.com is a domain that was registered by a friend of mine long long ago back before spam and web sites and all that crap ruined the beauty that was the Old Internet. (I'm being ironic here, by the way). I think he registered it because he thought it was kind of funny, but unfortunately he pointed it at his mail server.
:'}
It turns out that as the internet became more and more popular, more and more people started using someone@somewhere.com as the address they'd put into email when they didn't want the originator of the email to be known. For example, forwarded mail where you don't want the person who forwarded it to get mad at you for publishing their email address.
So he started getting a lot of crank email to somewhere.com - people complaining that he shouldn't send them mail about Jesus' third coming in a UFO, and stuff like that. For a while he tried sending mail to these people to clue them in, but of course they were un-cluable.
Eventially, it got to the point where he was mostly getting the kind of stuff you get when you've been joe-jobbed - angry replies to actual spam of the kind to which we've sadly become accustomed. It was then that he started analyzing the responses, and I'm pretty sure this is what inspired his anti-spam work.
Messagefire, the anti-spam service he started, really rocks. It's too bad that they've stopped accepting new customers. Sigh. Because I know him, I got in on the ground floor, and am still using it to filter my spam. It's wildly successful, and I'm very grateful to him for setting it up. I hope at some point they start selling service again.
No, example.com is valid (or invalid, as it were). Review RFC 2606.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
h4wh4w@[127.0.0.1] is the proper way to use an IP instead of a domain name. I use that (or @localhost) myself.
chris@xanadu:~$ whatis /.
/.: nothing appropriate.
You forgot a really big one
mugu@mugu.com -- 11,400
See the wiki about it for more info.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
Crispin
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Check out spamdam. It does that but forwards them your main account so you can disable addresses that are no longer useful. It has a nice web interface for managing aliases. I use it all the time and it's great. [/plug]
In RFC 2606, example.com, example.net and example.org are reserved for testing. Therefore, I always use [somename]@example.com for my fake e-mail needs.
There's some good info here:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4051
and here:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2606.html
God is imaginary
Please don't be rude to people who own real domains by using them, even if they're cute-sounding domains like no.com or nowhere.com, many of which are owned by old internet hackers who got the names when you could still get cool names like foo.com. It's fine to use example.com, which was set up specifically for that purpose. If you use domains that actually don't exist, you'll be hitting the TLD name servers, which really don't need that abuse either.
If you do want to be rude and pick an existing domain, at least pick somebody who's got the resources to handle it. President@whitehouse.gov, billg@microsoft.com, uce@ftc.gov. Alternatively, pick a service like mailinator.com or dodgeit.com that accept email for anybody, put it on a web page where you can retrieve it (with no password, so don't use it for anything real private), and garbage-collect old space after a while.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
haha, I thought I was the only one using bob@aol.com.
Poor bob!
I registered somewhere.com in 1995 (hey, it was free :-). After I sold my first consulting company, I named the next one after the domain. Somewhere.Com, LLC.
Spam didn't exist at the time. The first warning signs were when we'd occasionally get email bounces. Some versions of 'mail' on Unix, when unable to figure out who to return a bounce to, would send it to somewhere!name-of-the-user. Sendmail would helpfully turn that into somewhere.com, and we'd get the email.
When spam started, we started getting bounce backs. Spammers were using it as a "fake" domain. In those days somewhere's mail system was a Mac 8500 on a cable modem. Life would get very interesting when all of AOL's mail servers started throwing bounces at me as fast as they could. I had originally been bouncing messages back with messages asking people to stop--that had to change to straight rejections.
As a result of the time I was spending handling somewhere's email problems, I got into the anti-spam business. Initially writing tools to track spammers (http://www.spamwatcher.com/ is still up, although I don't know how well the spam analysis stuff is working). Later I co-founded Messagefire, an end-user anti-spam service.
In the meantime somewhere's email flow continued to climb. It's doubled every year. Hoaxes like the one about "wormalert@somewhere.com" (put it in your address book, and the fact that it's fake will cause viruses to die) didn't help. Nor did Microsoft FrontPage shipping with webmaster@somewhere.com as the default address in its templates. Axis shipped an internet enabled video camera that that (if you turned on the email feature) defaulted to sending all your security pictures to somewhere.com. (They've fixed it, but there are still cameras out there sending us a picture every 5-10 seconds.). Viruses that picked up all the references to somewhere.com off of people's address book and web caches started to account for more than a third of the email. People signing up for things with "fake" addresses accounted for a lot as well. (Why anyone would use an email address at a domain and not check to see if the domain existed first, I have no clue. Neither, apparently, do a lot of people who enter fake email addresses.) By last year we were rejecting 100,000 messages a day, of which close to 40,000 were going to someone@somewhere.com. I upgraded my DSL line to 768k just to handle the flow, and I had to limit my mail server to 100 simultaneous connections at a time.
This year we sold Messagefire to a Seattle company called MessageGate, and I now work for them. We use somewhere.com to stress test our enterprise anti-spam and compliance software. That happened only just in time; my router was starting to fail frequently under the load. Now the mail's on a high-bandwidth connection with multiple machines to handle the load--I just pick up the legitimate addresses after the spam has been filtered out.
I haven't looked in on it in several months, but we did let the email run unthrottled once early this year. After a few hours we were looking at enough bandwidth saturate several T1's, and volume of at least one million messages a day.
A couple things in summary.
1. Don't use fake email addresses. If you don't trust the site you are giving your email address too, then why are you doing business with them? If you're afraid of spam because you're posting your address publicly; then buy some anti-spam software. If I can manage to use legitimate email accounts on somewhere.com and not worry about spam, then obviously there's some out there that works well. I've been posting on usenet and the web using nazgul@somewhere.com for the past 9 years. The spammers definitely have my address. So what?
2. If you're going to make up a domain name, then *check* first to see if it's real! Better yet, don't. Just because it's not real now doesn't mean it won't be later. Use example.{com,net,org} if you must.
3. I see a number of people here s