September 02, 2003
let

I really dislike having to give out valid email addresses, even junk spam-only ones, for online services. Wading into the spam-heavy throw away accounts to look for that critical download location or activation code is always a pain in the ass.

In that vein, I think Mailinator might be the best thing ever. If you ever need an email address, just make one up with mailinator.com as the domain name. The account is created as it receives the email you need, you then check that address at the Mailinator site, and then forget about it. Mailinator deletes the address "a few hours" later.

Plus, the FAQ contains gems like

This sounds pretty insecure. What if I send important emails with sensitive super-secret information in them to mailinator?
Then you are a stupid-head. That isn't what this is for.
...how is mailinator going to make money?
It probably won't. It does offer advertising for reasonable rates. Don't worry, we don't need this to make money to eat. We make our real money driving tugboats. (toot! toot!)"

Brilliant.

Posted on September 02, 2003 11:06 PM
Comments

dude, that's brilliant. even though it's in violation of my basic internet philosophy, i think they SHOULD make money off of it just because it's such a great idea.

i can say that without fear, secure in the knowledge that it would be next to impossible for them to come up with a reasonable way to charge for that. hooray for the realm of the purely theoretical!

Posted by: dianna on September 3, 2003 09:31 AM
Cementhorizon