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Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

113 points by r0hitSehgal 6y ago

newscracker 6y ago
Feedback for the OP: I didn't understand how this works, and am reluctant to start a bot just to figure it out. It would be helpful if you could add some screenshots showing how email address creation, deletion and email receipt work (please do not use GIFs, just a set of static images are enough). Tangentially on Telegram bots, one of the things I dislike with privacy on Telegram is that the user ID (an internal Telegram generated number, not to be confused with your chosen username) given to bots is static. It's not an ID per bot and there's no way to change the ID without deleting your Telegram account and creating it again later (I'm not sure if it changes then either). Bots can also see and save your name (as entered on the profile) on Telegram. This makes it easier for bots (or bot swarms) to track users on Telegram. (AFAIK, Telegram bots don't get the phone number of the user; it'd be terrible if they did).
- r0hitSehgal 6y ago
  Sure, Will definitely take this into account.
miki123211 6y ago
Telegram is such an underappreciated platform. It has many features other platforms lack, is reasonably privacy-friendly, more so than fb/whatsapp/etc, but not enough to sacrifice features or UX. The have an API ind both official and unofficial clients for almost all platforms, including command line and native, non-electron Windows (UWP). The client API is not easy to use, as crypto and similar features are involved, but C libraries exist. On the other hand, the bot API is one of the most pleasant APIs I've ever seen. It just works, can be tested in the browser, there's no oAuth crap one needs to set up. It's beautifully simple. I use Telegram whenever I can, and it has become my goto Messenger these days.
- garaetjjte 6y ago
  Privacy-wise Whatsapp is probably better due to E2E.
  - newscracker 6y ago
    Depends on what you prefer. WhatsApp shares your messaging metadata with Facebook. WhatsApp also exposes your phone number to everyone else (for example, in groups). Telegram does not expose your phone number to others by default, and you can even make sure that phone number enumeration attacks can't be carried out (like the authorities did in Hong Kong last year).
  - fr2null 6y ago
    AFAIK, WhatsApp has decent E2EE, but metadata is not encrypted. So even though Facebook can't see what you are saying, it can see to whom you are saying it, how often, at what times etc.
    - jolux 6y ago
      Telegram isn’t encrypted at all by default, and its encryption scheme is sketchy.
      - FalconSensei 6y ago
        Exactly. WhatsApp still wins by having the message encrypted
      - fullstop 6y ago
        Eh? It's encrypted by default. Not E2E, though, although that is an option which you can choose to use.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        That's a bit disingenuous. Everything is encrypted these days, there's virtually nothing that doesn't use TLS. Therefore, when someone says "encrypted", it's a good bet they mean E2E.
stanislavb 6y ago
The problem with disposable mail is that it gets blocked quite often. For example, I have a list with more than 3000 domains of disposable mail servers and you can’t register or comment with such a mail on saashub.com or libhunt.com
- mobilio 6y ago
  Is this list public? I would like to take a look on it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nsgf 6y ago
    Not op. You can use something like this. https://github.com/FGRibreau/mailchecker https://github.com/FGRibreau/mailchecker
- r0hitSehgal 6y ago
  I will try to work on this part as well.
- Shorn 6y ago
  I run a service called Kopi that does this (plus email2rss functionality). You can bring your own domain, so broad block-list based blocking like that doesn't work. Plus, you're not locked in to the service. It's your domain - when you want to use something other than Kopi - you just change your MX record. https://kopi.cloud https://kopi.cloud
gruez 6y ago
What’s the point of implementing this as a telegram bot rather than a website? I guess it’s a USP, considering there are hundreds of disposable email websites out there, but I don’t see how it enhances the user experience.
- newscracker 6y ago
  I'm guessing it's just lesser friction for whoever uses Telegram. It's similar to how companies keep pushing apps instead of promoting websites (they do have other ulterior motives for that too).
- rmsaksida 6y ago
  In my case it's convenience. I have Telegram open most of the day and occasionally I use bots for small tasks that could be done elsewhere, but bots offer a more streamlined experience.
  - gruez 6y ago
    I get the concept, but I don't see how it applies to this use case. Both web/bot has the same workflow. web: open browser -> find website in bookmarks -> copy email -> do whatever you need to do with it -> switch back to the website to check for emails bot: open telegram -> find bot in chat history -> tell it to generate a new address -> copy it -> do whatever you need to do with it -> switch back to the app to check for emails The only case I could think of a bot being useful is for semi-permanent email. ie. using the same email address for weeks/months, rather than one time only.
    - r0hitSehgal 6y ago
      Yes thats true, its useful in these terms only. And thats why i have this concept of semipermanent disposable email address.
rmsaksida 6y ago
Cool idea for a bot. Suggestion: the UI could use more polish. You can use a conversational UI instead of `/create <email>`, `/delete <email>`. Also, it would be nice to have a command that generates a random user ID instead of having to type something in.
- r0hitSehgal 6y ago
  I will definitely take this into account sir :)
tgdn 6y ago
I'm not sure how this works, I installed the bot, sent /start No reply yet.
- noxer 6y ago
  The bot is simply down. I would say 90% of all bots are down all the time and most of them completely go offline within the first 3 months. There are a lot of reasons for that. like - no revenue - made by beginners with no scalability in mind so it simply cant handle the traffic if a bot gets popular - lose of interest in developing if it doesn't "blow up" soon - every good idea is instantly copied especially if the code is public there will be clones all over the place. - no official way to promote your bot. Most large groups will directly ban you if you tell em about the bot you made. Some even have bots to auto-ban if you name another bot. Everything is considered advertising/spam very toxic behavior in a lot groups. As with everything free on the internet there are the 0.1% who create and all other consume and give back nothing. Source: I'm on Telegram since nearly day one. I run roughly a dozen completely free to use bots since many years. Some of them with thousands of daily users.
  - r0hitSehgal 6y ago
    I am trying to keep this up with all my potential but i need support, please share and like this github source.
  - r0hitSehgal 6y ago
    I will definitely try to keep this up running for the longer term. Also I have not planned to make this monetary and keep it free from advertisement. I know initially things are slow, but I have jumped in to the game with long commitment. Also the source code is completely written by me and the motivation was to learn spring boot. I have not copied it :) And thanks for taking some time to review it. I really appreciate that.
    - noxer 6y ago
      Thats great! If you have any trouble or questions about telegram bots/the bot API I suggest you to join https://t.me/BotDevelopment https://t.me/BotDevelopment
solarkraft 6y ago
Thanks! There are other services like this out there, but they're all sketchy (the one I tried spams you with ads).
- r0hitSehgal 6y ago
  I don't have such intentions, the main reason to make this open source was this only. Even i hate ads, and I know every one does. Currently the bot is down, I will definitely work on this to get this fixed tomorrow. And once this is fixed the bot will be healthy.
OJFord 6y ago
Why doesn't AWS SES allow generating receiving addresses without giving a domain, like `<uuid>@inbound.ses.amazonaws.com` or something - there wouldn't be a reputational risk if it was incoming only right? That would be awesome. (The more common use case might be 'contact us' forms, for example, where you want to accept something as an email, but the address isn't user-facing so doesn't need a domain.)
kirubakaran 6y ago
Remember the old Zawinski's Law? "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." In 2020, r/mail/chat/g Telegram is such a great messenger to integrate with. It is basically just "import telegram" and you're almost done. I built the Telegram integration for Histre in just a weekend: https://histre.com/blog/take-notes-with-telegram/ https://histre.com/blog/take-notes-with-telegram/ This lets you take notes on Telegram either directly or via share intent, so that you can save links etc from your phone without installing another app. I think I also watched a movie and went for a hike that weekend, so it's not like it was an intense weekend of furious typing. I wish other messengers made it as easy. I'd love to integrate with Signal, and probably will do so soon, as a good number of my users are on Signal. But the number of steps listed just makes it easy to put it off for later. If you haven't integrated Telegram with your app yet, I'd suggest you look into it. You'd be surprised how easy it is. I think the sane and simple API approach is going to make Telegram eat all other messengers. But I'm a programmer, so maybe I just want that to be true ;)
vezycash 6y ago
First, this bot doesn't work. I was using this https://etlgr.io https://etlgr.io for disposable emails and it worked no stress. My Outlook app kept getting closed by android and I kept missing emails. So I created a disposable etlgr email to get bank notifications. Created a rule in Outlook.com to send balance notifications anytime money enters or leaves my account. Also a few times when discussing with clients, sent the email title to the bot. A few months back, there was one "a page a day" book reading service that came on hacker news. Created an email just for it. Another to receive manga notifications. Etlgr recently became a subscription service and that was the end. MY OTHER USES FOR TELEGRAM RSS feed reader for sites. Also created a private channel for my friends that posts 100% free udemy courses. It's been completely hands off for over a year now. Why Telegram Rocks My telegram account is accessible from 4 different devices - Two phones and two laptops (6 client apps). Could switch off the phone with the number registered to telegram and I'll still be able to chat. With WhatsApp this is impossible. I could lose my sim card, both phones and one laptop. But if I still have access to one client, I can login on fresh devices. This is because once you're registered, telegram sends the OTP to the installed clients instead of SMS. One awesome stuff they do is that after a successful logon on a new device, the notification is broadcast to all logged in client apps. Deleting the notification in one device will not remove it in others. Making it harder for account takeovers to happen stealthily. Also newly logged in clients cannot terminate older sessions. CHATTING The ability to edit already sent text in telegram is awesome. Make a mistake? Correct it. Telegram does not leave a "deleted" stamp when you delete a message unlike WhatsApp. In telegram you can delete everything in your chats from the other person's device. WhatsApp allows you to delete your chats from the other person's phone. Telegram tops that by allowing you to delete the other person's words from their own phone! Without this, quoted chats will have empty placeholders alerting the other party. FILE SIZE Limit Up to 1.5GB per file Telegram Rocks.
- r0hitSehgal 6y ago
  Oh this is exactly the same service that i tried to build. Does this enforces privacy ? They have some pricy model, so seems like they would be definitely keeping some ads out their in free version. But yeah thanks for letting this know, i will check this out.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
Good work. I was thinking about building a tool with opposite functionality - Getting chat messages delivered on email. Reason - To switch to a full-linux based phone, as clients for those platforms aren't available. I rarely use chat message so, intuitiveness is not the concern. But when I do get a message, I would like it to be delivered via an encrypted email service. Little thought went into this - Parsing messages from web app of the respective chat apps on a SBC.
- r0hitSehgal 6y ago
  Would you like to collaborate in this ? I would be happy to work with you on that.
  - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
    I appreciate the offer, I'll help in the way I can; but my coding time is very limited due to the health conditions. email: abishek.muthian[]protonmail[]
r0hitSehgal 6y ago
For now due to certificate issues with Telegram, Bot is not working, I will check the issues with the bot tomorrow, and will try to resolve it. Till than thanks for taking time to review it :) I really appreciate everyone's effort.
canada_dry 6y ago
https://telegram.me/DropmailBot https://telegram.me/DropmailBot How does this bot differ from this existing one?
- r0hitSehgal 6y ago
  This bot is not working for me. I tested this up actually. Can you please let me know what all are the functionalities of this bot. Do they also provide semi-permanent bot.
r0hitSehgal 6y ago
Bot is up again :), the issue got finally resolved :)

113 points by r0hitSehgal 6y ago

Feedback for the OP: I didn't understand how this works, and am reluctant to start a bot just to figure it out. It would be helpful if you could add some screenshots showing how email address creation, deletion and email receipt work (please do not use GIFs, just a set of static images are enough). Tangentially on Telegram bots, one of the things I dislike with privacy on Telegram is that the user ID (an internal Telegram generated number, not to be confused with your chosen username) given to bots is static. It's not an ID per bot and there's no way to change the ID without deleting your Telegram account and creating it again later (I'm not sure if it changes then either). Bots can also see and save your name (as entered on the profile) on Telegram. This makes it easier for bots (or bot swarms) to track users on Telegram. (AFAIK, Telegram bots don't get the phone number of the user; it'd be terrible if they did).

r0hitSehgal 6y ago
Sure, Will definitely take this into account.

miki123211 6y ago

Telegram is such an underappreciated platform. It has many features other platforms lack, is reasonably privacy-friendly, more so than fb/whatsapp/etc, but not enough to sacrifice features or UX. The have an API ind both official and unofficial clients for almost all platforms, including command line and native, non-electron Windows (UWP). The client API is not easy to use, as crypto and similar features are involved, but C libraries exist. On the other hand, the bot API is one of the most pleasant APIs I've ever seen. It just works, can be tested in the browser, there's no oAuth crap one needs to set up. It's beautifully simple. I use Telegram whenever I can, and it has become my goto Messenger these days.

garaetjjte 6y ago
Privacy-wise Whatsapp is probably better due to E2E.
- newscracker 6y ago
  Depends on what you prefer. WhatsApp shares your messaging metadata with Facebook. WhatsApp also exposes your phone number to everyone else (for example, in groups). Telegram does not expose your phone number to others by default, and you can even make sure that phone number enumeration attacks can't be carried out (like the authorities did in Hong Kong last year).
- fr2null 6y ago
  AFAIK, WhatsApp has decent E2EE, but metadata is not encrypted. So even though Facebook can't see what you are saying, it can see to whom you are saying it, how often, at what times etc.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Telegram isn’t encrypted at all by default, and its encryption scheme is sketchy.
    - FalconSensei 6y ago
      Exactly. WhatsApp still wins by having the message encrypted
    - fullstop 6y ago
      Eh? It's encrypted by default. Not E2E, though, although that is an option which you can choose to use.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        That's a bit disingenuous. Everything is encrypted these days, there's virtually nothing that doesn't use TLS. Therefore, when someone says "encrypted", it's a good bet they mean E2E.

stanislavb 6y ago

The problem with disposable mail is that it gets blocked quite often. For example, I have a list with more than 3000 domains of disposable mail servers and you can’t register or comment with such a mail on saashub.com or libhunt.com

mobilio 6y ago
Is this list public? I would like to take a look on it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nsgf 6y ago
  Not op. You can use something like this. https://github.com/FGRibreau/mailchecker https://github.com/FGRibreau/mailchecker
r0hitSehgal 6y ago
I will try to work on this part as well.
Shorn 6y ago
I run a service called Kopi that does this (plus email2rss functionality). You can bring your own domain, so broad block-list based blocking like that doesn't work. Plus, you're not locked in to the service. It's your domain - when you want to use something other than Kopi - you just change your MX record. https://kopi.cloud https://kopi.cloud

gruez 6y ago

What’s the point of implementing this as a telegram bot rather than a website? I guess it’s a USP, considering there are hundreds of disposable email websites out there, but I don’t see how it enhances the user experience.

newscracker 6y ago
I'm guessing it's just lesser friction for whoever uses Telegram. It's similar to how companies keep pushing apps instead of promoting websites (they do have other ulterior motives for that too).
rmsaksida 6y ago
In my case it's convenience. I have Telegram open most of the day and occasionally I use bots for small tasks that could be done elsewhere, but bots offer a more streamlined experience.
- gruez 6y ago
  I get the concept, but I don't see how it applies to this use case. Both web/bot has the same workflow. web: open browser -> find website in bookmarks -> copy email -> do whatever you need to do with it -> switch back to the website to check for emails bot: open telegram -> find bot in chat history -> tell it to generate a new address -> copy it -> do whatever you need to do with it -> switch back to the app to check for emails The only case I could think of a bot being useful is for semi-permanent email. ie. using the same email address for weeks/months, rather than one time only.
  - r0hitSehgal 6y ago
    Yes thats true, its useful in these terms only. And thats why i have this concept of semipermanent disposable email address.

rmsaksida 6y ago

Cool idea for a bot. Suggestion: the UI could use more polish. You can use a conversational UI instead of `/create <email>`, `/delete <email>`. Also, it would be nice to have a command that generates a random user ID instead of having to type something in.

r0hitSehgal 6y ago
I will definitely take this into account sir :)

tgdn 6y ago

I'm not sure how this works, I installed the bot, sent /start No reply yet.

noxer 6y ago
The bot is simply down. I would say 90% of all bots are down all the time and most of them completely go offline within the first 3 months. There are a lot of reasons for that. like - no revenue - made by beginners with no scalability in mind so it simply cant handle the traffic if a bot gets popular - lose of interest in developing if it doesn't "blow up" soon - every good idea is instantly copied especially if the code is public there will be clones all over the place. - no official way to promote your bot. Most large groups will directly ban you if you tell em about the bot you made. Some even have bots to auto-ban if you name another bot. Everything is considered advertising/spam very toxic behavior in a lot groups. As with everything free on the internet there are the 0.1% who create and all other consume and give back nothing. Source: I'm on Telegram since nearly day one. I run roughly a dozen completely free to use bots since many years. Some of them with thousands of daily users.
- r0hitSehgal 6y ago
  I am trying to keep this up with all my potential but i need support, please share and like this github source.
- r0hitSehgal 6y ago
  I will definitely try to keep this up running for the longer term. Also I have not planned to make this monetary and keep it free from advertisement. I know initially things are slow, but I have jumped in to the game with long commitment. Also the source code is completely written by me and the motivation was to learn spring boot. I have not copied it :) And thanks for taking some time to review it. I really appreciate that.
  - noxer 6y ago
    Thats great! If you have any trouble or questions about telegram bots/the bot API I suggest you to join https://t.me/BotDevelopment https://t.me/BotDevelopment

solarkraft 6y ago

Thanks! There are other services like this out there, but they're all sketchy (the one I tried spams you with ads).

r0hitSehgal 6y ago
I don't have such intentions, the main reason to make this open source was this only. Even i hate ads, and I know every one does. Currently the bot is down, I will definitely work on this to get this fixed tomorrow. And once this is fixed the bot will be healthy.

OJFord 6y ago

Why doesn't AWS SES allow generating receiving addresses without giving a domain, like `<uuid>@inbound.ses.amazonaws.com` or something - there wouldn't be a reputational risk if it was incoming only right? That would be awesome. (The more common use case might be 'contact us' forms, for example, where you want to accept something as an email, but the address isn't user-facing so doesn't need a domain.)

kirubakaran 6y ago

Remember the old Zawinski's Law? "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." In 2020, r/mail/chat/g Telegram is such a great messenger to integrate with. It is basically just "import telegram" and you're almost done. I built the Telegram integration for Histre in just a weekend: https://histre.com/blog/take-notes-with-telegram/ https://histre.com/blog/take-notes-with-telegram/ This lets you take notes on Telegram either directly or via share intent, so that you can save links etc from your phone without installing another app. I think I also watched a movie and went for a hike that weekend, so it's not like it was an intense weekend of furious typing. I wish other messengers made it as easy. I'd love to integrate with Signal, and probably will do so soon, as a good number of my users are on Signal. But the number of steps listed just makes it easy to put it off for later. If you haven't integrated Telegram with your app yet, I'd suggest you look into it. You'd be surprised how easy it is. I think the sane and simple API approach is going to make Telegram eat all other messengers. But I'm a programmer, so maybe I just want that to be true ;)

vezycash 6y ago

First, this bot doesn't work. I was using this https://etlgr.io https://etlgr.io for disposable emails and it worked no stress. My Outlook app kept getting closed by android and I kept missing emails. So I created a disposable etlgr email to get bank notifications. Created a rule in Outlook.com to send balance notifications anytime money enters or leaves my account. Also a few times when discussing with clients, sent the email title to the bot. A few months back, there was one "a page a day" book reading service that came on hacker news. Created an email just for it. Another to receive manga notifications. Etlgr recently became a subscription service and that was the end. MY OTHER USES FOR TELEGRAM RSS feed reader for sites. Also created a private channel for my friends that posts 100% free udemy courses. It's been completely hands off for over a year now. Why Telegram Rocks My telegram account is accessible from 4 different devices - Two phones and two laptops (6 client apps). Could switch off the phone with the number registered to telegram and I'll still be able to chat. With WhatsApp this is impossible. I could lose my sim card, both phones and one laptop. But if I still have access to one client, I can login on fresh devices. This is because once you're registered, telegram sends the OTP to the installed clients instead of SMS. One awesome stuff they do is that after a successful logon on a new device, the notification is broadcast to all logged in client apps. Deleting the notification in one device will not remove it in others. Making it harder for account takeovers to happen stealthily. Also newly logged in clients cannot terminate older sessions. CHATTING The ability to edit already sent text in telegram is awesome. Make a mistake? Correct it. Telegram does not leave a "deleted" stamp when you delete a message unlike WhatsApp. In telegram you can delete everything in your chats from the other person's device. WhatsApp allows you to delete your chats from the other person's phone. Telegram tops that by allowing you to delete the other person's words from their own phone! Without this, quoted chats will have empty placeholders alerting the other party. FILE SIZE Limit Up to 1.5GB per file Telegram Rocks.

r0hitSehgal 6y ago
Oh this is exactly the same service that i tried to build. Does this enforces privacy ? They have some pricy model, so seems like they would be definitely keeping some ads out their in free version. But yeah thanks for letting this know, i will check this out.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

Good work. I was thinking about building a tool with opposite functionality - Getting chat messages delivered on email. Reason - To switch to a full-linux based phone, as clients for those platforms aren't available. I rarely use chat message so, intuitiveness is not the concern. But when I do get a message, I would like it to be delivered via an encrypted email service. Little thought went into this - Parsing messages from web app of the respective chat apps on a SBC.

r0hitSehgal 6y ago
Would you like to collaborate in this ? I would be happy to work with you on that.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  I appreciate the offer, I'll help in the way I can; but my coding time is very limited due to the health conditions. email: abishek.muthian[]protonmail[]

r0hitSehgal 6y ago

For now due to certificate issues with Telegram, Bot is not working, I will check the issues with the bot tomorrow, and will try to resolve it. Till than thanks for taking time to review it :) I really appreciate everyone's effort.

canada_dry 6y ago

https://telegram.me/DropmailBot https://telegram.me/DropmailBot How does this bot differ from this existing one?

r0hitSehgal 6y ago
This bot is not working for me. I tested this up actually. Can you please let me know what all are the functionalities of this bot. Do they also provide semi-permanent bot.

r0hitSehgal 6y ago

Bot is up again :), the issue got finally resolved :)