

Show HN: maskedmail: craigslist style email anonymizer web service - bobbywilson0
http://www.maskedmail.net/

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Mc_Big_G
I'm probably the perfect fit for this service, but I have a few concerns.

1) Reliability

Your site is sparse and I have no idea who you are. I don't have a lot of
confidence at this point that I can use this service reliably for my company.

Also, your site says I can try it now at <http://api.maskedmail.net/beta>
which gives a 404. Not good.

2) Attention to detail.

 _"Thanks for your interest maskedmail we'll let you know when you we are
ready for you."_

One too many you's.

3) I thought when I signed up I could start to use it and the "We'll let you
know" was a let down.

4) I assumed I would have to roll me own in a day or two and I probably will.
I'm not sure the pain point here is strong enough to make a business. I would
open-source it as a rails plugin since it seems to be in ruby. You'll probably
get some interest and side work out of it.

Even though it would be extremely useful for me, the price point would have to
be pretty low and the reliability extremely high for me to not just roll my
own.

Sorry if I'm being overly negative, but I do hope that helps you.

~~~
bobbywilson0
1.) good point, I need to have a redirect for a get reqeuest on
api.maskedmail.net. Right now it only accepts posts to test the service.

2.) thanks for noticing I will change that.

3.) I am going to provide sign ups with an API key to with a few more
features. If you do want to give it a shot now just send a post request with a
JSON body of the email address you want to test.

4.) Rolling your own has more to do with setting up a mail server than writing
any code. The example is in ruby but it is just an example of consuming the
service. Rolling your own at this point might be fine for you, I think the
value is the convenience of not configuring a mail server, or if you don't
have a mail server as part of your hosting (like heroku).

The critical review is definitely helpful. I appreciate you taking the time to
give such thorough feedback.

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Brushfire
This is neat, but I'm really only interested in the source to use in my own
projects.

I wouldnt want @maskedmail.com, I'd want @app.mydomain.com or whatever. I
guess thats trickier becuase I'd need to provision a catch-all account and
then have something parse through all emails to any address.

~~~
bobbywilson0
Yeah, I do realize that this would be ideal for people. It would be possible
to point an mx record at me, and I could add your custom domain. So you could
point your app.yourdomain.com MX record to my IP. I would know that based on
your api key that requests coming from you should be created with the
'app.yourdomain.com' address and not maskedmail.net. That capability is
actually built into how I have it set up now. If you are interested I would be
happy to talk more about how we could get that set up.

Thanks for the feedback

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noibl
For email, anonymity and disposability go together IMO. The main problem you
want to avoid is getting spammed or harrassed through an address that you
can't afford to turn off. I currently pay Sneakemail a yearly fee for a
service that helps me do that.

So I would love to see this API fleshed out with some management features and
maybe support for self-hosted MX.

~~~
bobbywilson0
This idea was originally geared towards people building applications that
would provide users of their site with an anonymous alias. So that you can get
anonymously contacted, and then depending on how it is configured trash the
alias. I guess it could potentially work for personal use too.

~~~
noibl
Sure, I get that. But my point was that I don't see the trashing.

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bwr
Just thought I'd mention that when I hit "sign up", Firefox prompts me with
the "open with/save file" dialog. I am using Firefox 3.5.9 on Ubuntu 9.10

~~~
isthisanything
Ah, thank you, content-type was set to json. Fixed now.

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noelchurchill
It would be great as a browser plugin for creating new accounts and not
needing to give them my real email address.

~~~
PostOnce
I think it would be better marketed as a tool for initial contact with people
you may not necessarily want to have long-term knowledge of where to contact
you.

For signing up for stuff, there is mailinator/bugmenot/etc., and many sites
block such services anyway.

~~~
bobbywilson0
I thought similar, that this would be useful for community type sites where
you need someone to contact you but don't want to share your email address.

Thanks for the feedback

------
bobbywilson0
Looking for honest feedback if this is useful to anyone or not.

