Hotmail Launches Accounts You Can Throw Away

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."

Comments

I guess...

[msauve]

this is the first time I've seen a Microsoft focused article after the /. redesign. Bill as Borg doesn't seem right - he's not even in charge any more. Where's Ballmer with a chair (and not sitting on it)?

Here.

[MrEricSir]

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

Re:Here.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a DynDns subdomain (free) for which I registered a Google Labs account (free) and set up Gmail (free). I get up to 50 Gmail accounts @ my DynDns subdomain. Adding or removing them is easy, and with multiple sign-in, switching between them is easy. Plus I can set them to forward messages to my main e-mail address.

Hrmmm

[WiglyWorm]

Isn't that what people do with their hotmail account anyway? Throw it away?

Re:Cool idea

[Abstrackt]

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.

Own domain

[Dan East]

I've been doing a similar thing with my own domain / webserver for the last decade. I'll make up email addresses right on the spot, usually like "slashdot.org@mydomain.com" or "sprint@mydomain.com", etc. I have a catch all account that receives all emails to non-existent accounts, and I can split any of the addresses off into an actual account whenever needed (or disable it if it becomes inundated with spam). That was always one of the big perks of owning your own domain.

Re:Own domain

[SydShamino]

Yup, I do exactly this for about the same length of time. The only difficulty is when I have to give an address to someone verbally, and they think I'm giving them a fake one since it's yourcompany@mydomain.com. I usually get around this by giving those people randomthreedigits@mydomain.com or similar. As it happens I've only ever lost one address this way to spam, but it was obvious right away who sold my address.

Re:Cool idea

[Manfre]

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

Re:Cool idea

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Cool idea

[Patoski]

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.

Additionally you can also place a period anywhere in the user portion of your email address and gmail will route it to your address.

For instance, if your email address is "bufordpusser@gmail.com", you can also give out "buford.pusser@gmail.com", "b.u.ford.pusser@gmail.com", etc. and all of them will route to your original address.