6 ms·

>There's only one thing that can change my mind a little: if you guarantee email is not and will never be required to sign up or use a feature. I'm not trying

>There's only one thing that can change my mind a little: if you guarantee email is not and will never be required to sign up or use a feature. I'm not trying to play the devils advocate here, just genuinely curious: Why do you (or anyone else) have such a strong opinion on not using emails for signing up? Usually, when a service requires me to enter an email, I have no issue with using a service like 10minutemail and never checking that email account again.

notkaiho 6y ago
Exactly, it's not like you can't create a genuinely anonymous email address for a one-off purpose.
- badrabbit 6y ago
  Yes it's actully like that. Those services get blocked but why do I have to use a third party when you can just make emails optional. If many users dont feel comfortable giving up their email, just make it optinal. You cant expect my support when you don't care about forcing me to jump through hoops because you don't care about my privacy preferences.
  - notkaiho 6y ago
    I'd genuinely be curious as to some statistics about how many users do feel strongly about using an email / generating an email. I get that you feel that way, but to what extent is it a common feeling?
    - badrabbit 6y ago
      I would love to know as well, a poll would be great. I posed a poll, let's see if we can get an hn specific answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665907
MintelIE 6y ago
People don't trust companies who want an email address. You get extra spam, the company or their successors and partners sell the email address, poorly secured computers and cloud nonsense almost ensure it'll be stolen, and nowadays if you have an incorrect opinion you could easily be doxxed, even by people inside of these big tech companies and startups. You may not care about these issues, and you might have the correct opinions for now which don't irritate the tech overlords. But lots of people have learned the hard way that providing an email address is, at the very best, going to result in spam. At the worst? You could be physically assaulted, lose your job to an outrage mob...
- tetris11 6y ago
  Its am easy way to filter bots though, and its similarly easy for actual users to use disposable emails
  - SiNiquity 6y ago
    Requiring an email isn't a (good) way to filter bots though.
  - badrabbit 6y ago
    Bots cant use anonymous email? Seriously?
  - detaro 6y ago
    What makes it easy to distinguish disposable emails belonging to bots from those belonging to humans?
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  And which of these problems is not solved by 10minutemail?
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    They'll ban it once they notice.
badrabbit 6y ago
I have spoken about this many times on HN. It comes down to this: email is being used in many nefarious ways and it is an ancient protocol with many insecurities. Anonymous email works for a bit but then every service worth using starts banning the providers. Both reddit and HN prospered as a result of not requiring email, that should tell you a lot about how horrible it is. It's on the same level as social security numbers being used as a secure secret that identifies a person. Email was not meant to be abusef this way, and I have seen first hand how it can be used against people so I have chosen it as my figurative "hill to die on". Now, if I can give a limited use address that cant be tied to me as an individual,expires after a period of time and messages are E2EE encrypted with no metadata leakage I don't mind that. I have spent almost an entire day trying to sign up to one service withour having to give up my phone number,real IP,creditcard or real email address to anyone as a challenge. I have tried countless anonymous email providers and sms code receiving services. I failed. Email abd phone number collection is a modern tech evil for me.
- judge2020 6y ago
  The problem is always 'how do i allow this user to reset their password', or more 'how do i verifiably contact the user'/'how do i verify someone emailing support is who they say they are' - without email, it's completely on the user to know and remember their password, something a lot of people can't do (and most don't use a p/w manager). HN does fine here since it's a 'tech' community where the majority likely does use a password manager, and Reddit gets away with it since their UI is so quiet about the email being optional - almost everyone thinks it's a required field since other websites require it and it looks just like the u/p field.
  - badrabbit 6y ago
    If you choose to opt out of email then you also choose to opt out of email support and being able to reset passwords via email. Two factor auth solutions let you store a one time recovery code for example that you write down or store somewhere safe, that's one option if you care to support it but I wouldn't mind losing the email only features you mentioned either.

notkaiho 6y ago

Exactly, it's not like you can't create a genuinely anonymous email address for a one-off purpose.

badrabbit 6y ago
Yes it's actully like that. Those services get blocked but why do I have to use a third party when you can just make emails optional. If many users dont feel comfortable giving up their email, just make it optinal. You cant expect my support when you don't care about forcing me to jump through hoops because you don't care about my privacy preferences.
- notkaiho 6y ago
  I'd genuinely be curious as to some statistics about how many users do feel strongly about using an email / generating an email. I get that you feel that way, but to what extent is it a common feeling?
  - badrabbit 6y ago
    I would love to know as well, a poll would be great. I posed a poll, let's see if we can get an hn specific answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665907

MintelIE 6y ago

People don't trust companies who want an email address. You get extra spam, the company or their successors and partners sell the email address, poorly secured computers and cloud nonsense almost ensure it'll be stolen, and nowadays if you have an incorrect opinion you could easily be doxxed, even by people inside of these big tech companies and startups. You may not care about these issues, and you might have the correct opinions for now which don't irritate the tech overlords. But lots of people have learned the hard way that providing an email address is, at the very best, going to result in spam. At the worst? You could be physically assaulted, lose your job to an outrage mob...

tetris11 6y ago
Its am easy way to filter bots though, and its similarly easy for actual users to use disposable emails
- SiNiquity 6y ago
  Requiring an email isn't a (good) way to filter bots though.
- badrabbit 6y ago
  Bots cant use anonymous email? Seriously?
- detaro 6y ago
  What makes it easy to distinguish disposable emails belonging to bots from those belonging to humans?
MattGaiser 6y ago
And which of these problems is not solved by 10minutemail?
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  They'll ban it once they notice.

badrabbit 6y ago

I have spoken about this many times on HN. It comes down to this: email is being used in many nefarious ways and it is an ancient protocol with many insecurities. Anonymous email works for a bit but then every service worth using starts banning the providers. Both reddit and HN prospered as a result of not requiring email, that should tell you a lot about how horrible it is. It's on the same level as social security numbers being used as a secure secret that identifies a person. Email was not meant to be abusef this way, and I have seen first hand how it can be used against people so I have chosen it as my figurative "hill to die on". Now, if I can give a limited use address that cant be tied to me as an individual,expires after a period of time and messages are E2EE encrypted with no metadata leakage I don't mind that. I have spent almost an entire day trying to sign up to one service withour having to give up my phone number,real IP,creditcard or real email address to anyone as a challenge. I have tried countless anonymous email providers and sms code receiving services. I failed. Email abd phone number collection is a modern tech evil for me.

judge2020 6y ago
The problem is always 'how do i allow this user to reset their password', or more 'how do i verifiably contact the user'/'how do i verify someone emailing support is who they say they are' - without email, it's completely on the user to know and remember their password, something a lot of people can't do (and most don't use a p/w manager). HN does fine here since it's a 'tech' community where the majority likely does use a password manager, and Reddit gets away with it since their UI is so quiet about the email being optional - almost everyone thinks it's a required field since other websites require it and it looks just like the u/p field.
- badrabbit 6y ago
  If you choose to opt out of email then you also choose to opt out of email support and being able to reset passwords via email. Two factor auth solutions let you store a one time recovery code for example that you write down or store somewhere safe, that's one option if you care to support it but I wouldn't mind losing the email only features you mentioned either.