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I can also vouch for mailinator, it's a brilliant service. Also, if you just need quick access to a site, you probably don't even need to make an account. Just

I can also vouch for mailinator, it's a brilliant service. Also, if you just need quick access to a site, you probably don't even need to make an account. Just go to the 'forgot my password' page and put in sitename@mailinator.com - someone may have previously created an account through mailinator, you can just grab the new password in the email and sign in :)

nirvdrum 12y ago
Rampant abuse from Mailinator users is one reason we started requiring credit cards for trials at my last startup.
- Aldo_MX 12y ago
  Rampant abuse from companies is one reason I started using Mailinator. See the vicious circle here? If companies didn't use dark patterns (such as subscribing you automatically to newsletters when you purchase something), people wouldn't need to use disposable email addresses.
  - nirvdrum 12y ago
    Fully 100% of the Mailinator users that used our service were doing it to try to take advantage of a generous trial system. That says nothing of those that were trying to DoS the service. And the parent was essentially advocating for hijacking an existing account to avoid going through legitimate channels. If you don't want to abide by the ToS, then take the principled stand and don't use the service. Maybe even let the company know about it. Plus addressing and filters are free and every email provider I'm aware of has them. If newsletters bother you that much, there are options other than a service designed for abuse. Doing MX lookups was annoying so we solved our problem another way. We managed to cut out virtually all abuse without appreciably affecting conversion. It just sucks we had to leave behind the few that legitimately wanted to trial without a CC on file (although if they contacted us, we were happy to oblige). And it sucks we had to spend engineering effort trying to deal with abuse, almost all of it originating from a single, well-known provider (Mailinator) -- not the best use of time for a bootstrapped company. I guess the next stage in this vicious cycle is a service that gives out free credit card numbers that can authorize but can't be charged (or maybe just a stolen CC database). edit - Clarified some points due to inadvertently submitting early.
    - Aldo_MX 12y ago
      There is a service which gives you unlimited disposable credit card numbers, just ask your bank for it. You can't stop abuse against a time-based trial, so why use a time-based trial? I don't know your business, but you should consider designing an unlimited trial instead, if your service is good most people will eventually pay for it, or even better, someone else will pay on behalf of them. A prime example is Dropbox, when you purchase specific phone models you get extra storage, the user didn't pay for that storage, but someone else did (most likely the company who is selling the phone).
      - oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
        Totally depends on your service. Some services easily lend themselves to some sort of 'unlimited free/paid improved' model - e.g. GitHub's number of repos. Others, however, are really difficult to shoehorn into that model, and a time-based trial is the best option - a 'content centric' service, for example.
      - nirvdrum 12y ago
        I can assure you, abuse all but stopped when putting the credit card gate up. We tried all sorts of things with the trial over our 5 year tenure. Way too much time went into dealing with abuse. In our case, it was a visual web testing service. When someone is abusing the service, another person can't use those browsers. Adding more machines might be scalable if you've raised money, but if you're bootstrapping (as we were) there's a very real ceiling to what you can afford. We were running well above the capacity needed for legitimate usage, at our expense, and still had problems stemming from Mailinator traffic. Maybe other companies have a different experience and Mailinator users turn into loyal, paying customers. In our case, they did nothing but waste resources (both computing and human). And in 5 years, not a single one turned into a paying customer, yet many were happy to leech over extended periods of time (we could see the sites being tested, so tracking it was fairly straightforward). I admit, it was weird being able to classify one whole source of traffic as simply negative, but we had the data to back it up. And just to clarify, abuse is being used in two contexts here: 1) people trying to use the service indefinitely without paying for it; and 2) people trying to actually DoS other sites, screw up our browser cluster by firing up pop-ups and print dialogs, and other general scumbaggery.
  - cmdrfred 12y ago
    Agree 100%, I want to test your service to see if I want do buy it != I want you to contact me about said service forever and how you knocked 20 cents off If I buy it for the year. And don't give me that nonsense that I can enable my spam filter either. By the same argument you can implement DDOS protection so don't worry about the botnet.
    - nirvdrum 12y ago
      Great news for you: we never sent out emails like that. So the entire argument is moot. I also never said anything about spam filters. Again, if you just want to avoid a newsletter, great. Try the service and move on if you don't like it. Using that as an excuse to abuse a service is the mental leap I can't make and I don't get how it's even defensible. If you really care about services like Mailinator, the abuse is something you should care about because companies will just keep making it harder to use your email hiding service of choice.
      - cmdrfred 12y ago
        I own several domains if I really wanted to abuse the service I can create and destroy email accounts at will. Maybe you happen to be one of the good ones, sorry you got lumped in with 90 percent of your fellows. The only reason you are getting a legit email from me is if I value your service enough to want to be able to do a password reset.

nirvdrum 12y ago

Rampant abuse from Mailinator users is one reason we started requiring credit cards for trials at my last startup.

Aldo_MX 12y ago
Rampant abuse from companies is one reason I started using Mailinator. See the vicious circle here? If companies didn't use dark patterns (such as subscribing you automatically to newsletters when you purchase something), people wouldn't need to use disposable email addresses.
- nirvdrum 12y ago
  Fully 100% of the Mailinator users that used our service were doing it to try to take advantage of a generous trial system. That says nothing of those that were trying to DoS the service. And the parent was essentially advocating for hijacking an existing account to avoid going through legitimate channels. If you don't want to abide by the ToS, then take the principled stand and don't use the service. Maybe even let the company know about it. Plus addressing and filters are free and every email provider I'm aware of has them. If newsletters bother you that much, there are options other than a service designed for abuse. Doing MX lookups was annoying so we solved our problem another way. We managed to cut out virtually all abuse without appreciably affecting conversion. It just sucks we had to leave behind the few that legitimately wanted to trial without a CC on file (although if they contacted us, we were happy to oblige). And it sucks we had to spend engineering effort trying to deal with abuse, almost all of it originating from a single, well-known provider (Mailinator) -- not the best use of time for a bootstrapped company. I guess the next stage in this vicious cycle is a service that gives out free credit card numbers that can authorize but can't be charged (or maybe just a stolen CC database). edit - Clarified some points due to inadvertently submitting early.
  - Aldo_MX 12y ago
    There is a service which gives you unlimited disposable credit card numbers, just ask your bank for it. You can't stop abuse against a time-based trial, so why use a time-based trial? I don't know your business, but you should consider designing an unlimited trial instead, if your service is good most people will eventually pay for it, or even better, someone else will pay on behalf of them. A prime example is Dropbox, when you purchase specific phone models you get extra storage, the user didn't pay for that storage, but someone else did (most likely the company who is selling the phone).
    - oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
      Totally depends on your service. Some services easily lend themselves to some sort of 'unlimited free/paid improved' model - e.g. GitHub's number of repos. Others, however, are really difficult to shoehorn into that model, and a time-based trial is the best option - a 'content centric' service, for example.
    - nirvdrum 12y ago
      I can assure you, abuse all but stopped when putting the credit card gate up. We tried all sorts of things with the trial over our 5 year tenure. Way too much time went into dealing with abuse. In our case, it was a visual web testing service. When someone is abusing the service, another person can't use those browsers. Adding more machines might be scalable if you've raised money, but if you're bootstrapping (as we were) there's a very real ceiling to what you can afford. We were running well above the capacity needed for legitimate usage, at our expense, and still had problems stemming from Mailinator traffic. Maybe other companies have a different experience and Mailinator users turn into loyal, paying customers. In our case, they did nothing but waste resources (both computing and human). And in 5 years, not a single one turned into a paying customer, yet many were happy to leech over extended periods of time (we could see the sites being tested, so tracking it was fairly straightforward). I admit, it was weird being able to classify one whole source of traffic as simply negative, but we had the data to back it up. And just to clarify, abuse is being used in two contexts here: 1) people trying to use the service indefinitely without paying for it; and 2) people trying to actually DoS other sites, screw up our browser cluster by firing up pop-ups and print dialogs, and other general scumbaggery.
- cmdrfred 12y ago
  Agree 100%, I want to test your service to see if I want do buy it != I want you to contact me about said service forever and how you knocked 20 cents off If I buy it for the year. And don't give me that nonsense that I can enable my spam filter either. By the same argument you can implement DDOS protection so don't worry about the botnet.
  - nirvdrum 12y ago
    Great news for you: we never sent out emails like that. So the entire argument is moot. I also never said anything about spam filters. Again, if you just want to avoid a newsletter, great. Try the service and move on if you don't like it. Using that as an excuse to abuse a service is the mental leap I can't make and I don't get how it's even defensible. If you really care about services like Mailinator, the abuse is something you should care about because companies will just keep making it harder to use your email hiding service of choice.
    - cmdrfred 12y ago
      I own several domains if I really wanted to abuse the service I can create and destroy email accounts at will. Maybe you happen to be one of the good ones, sorry you got lumped in with 90 percent of your fellows. The only reason you are getting a legit email from me is if I value your service enough to want to be able to do a password reset.