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Hotmail Launches Accounts You Can Throw Away

Posted by timothy on from the at-last-a-feature-that-leads-gmail dept.

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Today, Hotmail is getting a new feature aimed at 'e-mail enthusiasts,' which lets anyone create multiple e-mail accounts that can be read, replied to, and managed from their everyday e-mail inbox. These additional e-mail addresses can be had in the same manner as signing up for new accounts, but they require no extra log-ins or upkeep. ... The idea is to give users a safe way to provide third parties with an e-mail address, without giving up the address they've provided to family and friends, which, if compromised, can end the usefulness of that particular account. Each user will be able to create up to five aliases, any of which can be deleted and replaced with another at any time. Over time, Microsoft will increase that limit to 15 aliases per account, making it so that the true heavy users won't need to juggle between two or more Hotmail accounts."

5 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Here. by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=69570

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:Here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Interesting but not quite the same thing. If an account gets really jacked up then you would have to make another gmail account, remove the old one, then add the new one. Kind of a pain in the ass.

      With the Hotmail feature you simply delete the old one and make a new one right there. It's much more straightforward and quick.

  2. Re:Cool idea by Abstrackt · · Score: 5, Informative

    While not exactly an implementation of a throwaway address, you can use plus sign addressing (subaddressing, i.e. name+slashdot@gmail.com) with Google. I use it for every site I sign up on so I can see who gives out my email address so I can filter everything from that alias into the trash.

    --
    They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
  3. Re:Cool idea by Manfre · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've encountered several sites that do not allow a + in the email address, or come even remotely close to implementing the RFC.

    This is a worthwhile read and the regex was fun to implement. http://haacked.com/archive/2007/08/21/i-knew-how-to-validate-an-email-address-until-i.aspx

  4. Re:Cool idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Do you mean the catchall? If so, yeah I do it too and love it.

    You get *@yourdomain forwarded to your inbox. Then you just make one rule in your filters. In the "has the words" box for filter creation, you put deliveredto:({[one],[two],[three],[four]})

    One, two, three, and four being @yourdomain "accounts" that are abandoned due to spam. Just tell gmail to send those directly to the trash, which keeps your spambox empty.

    It doesn't get any better than that. No need to create new email addresses, they all already exist. Just filter out the ones that start causing you trouble.