

Ask HN: What are some use cases for my web service? - maskur
http://www.maskur.com/?

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scrame
You might look into the uses, history, and eventual demise of anon.penet.fi:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anon.penet.fi>

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robotrout
I like this idea. It serves some sort of need, I'm sure.

I don't see how to monetize it, but if your goal is just to provide a needed
service, I think it's pretty cool. It's arguably more convenient than setting
up another yahoo or google account.

As to who would use it, one would first assume it would be mostly folks
engaged in illegal sorts of activities. Since we've decided to control our
population by getting them to live in fear, by making them all guilty of
breaking some law, I'd say your userbase is potentially very large.

However, some of those folks (child porn, drug dealers, terrorists) probably
shouldn't be helped. There's also the paranoia aspect. How do I know you're
not a cop, trying to trap me? How do I know you're really destroying your
database? I think anybody that's doing something wrong won't risk using you.

So, taking out the justifiably paranoid law breakers, that need you, but dare
not use you, that leaves us with dating and craigslist ads.

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arihelgason
Emailing people you meet on <http://omegle.com>

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maskur
This is a good use case; if only I can partner with omegle's owner.

~~~
icey
He's on reddit and fairly active, you could probably message him over there:

<http://www.reddit.com/user/eurleif>

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bayareaguy
This sounds like a good way for people who use online services and games to
collaborate without the downsides of exposing "real" email addresses (which
seemingly inevitably find their way to spammers, search engines, etc).

It could be particularly useful for celebrities, public figures, political
protesters, parents, teenagers or anyone who might be otherwise embarrassed
(or worse) should their email logs be revealed to an inappropriate social
group or the general public.

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callmeed
Whistle-blowers and others who want to leak info to journalists/investigators
without revealing their identity right away.

You should include a form that allows a user to notify a person of their
maskur address via SMS ...

"I have important info regarding insider trading at YAHOOGLE, please email me
at yahoogle-leak@maskur.com"

~~~
arihelgason
A disposable email address would do the job. Also, a source might want to know
who they're dealing with.

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makmanalp
Normally you'd come up with use cases before you actually implement the idea
:) You could encourage people to use it with any sort of online trade
(craigslist / ebay etc) but I don't think it'd take long for them to duplicate
the behavior should this ever become very popular.

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joshu
subpoena magnet?

~~~
maskur
I'm aware of this; The mailinator guy Paul Tyma talked about this in his blog
([http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2006/06/im-getting-sick-of-
subp...](http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2006/06/im-getting-sick-of-
subpoenas.html)).

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krisneuharth
You could possibly create an API for this service and see how people use it.
In my current project I have a need for something like this but having to send
an email complicates my use case some.

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levirosol
how exactly do you do this?

"If you want to email someone, have them send an email to your maskur.com
address, so their maskur.com address will appear in the "From" field, or ask
them to mask their email on this page."

at that point, haven't you already communicated with them? either by phone /
in person, or via email?

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slmbrhrt
Public bulletin boards, forums, and ads are a few ways to do it.

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sebastian
Pretty similar to mailinator.com witch I have been using for a while.

~~~
maskur
The difference is that maskur masks the address of incoming mail, whereas
mailinator doesn't. Mailinator is good for when one party wants to hide their
address, whereas maskur is good for situations where both parties want to hide
their address.

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mehere
this is _exactly_ what Match.com started as...

------
there
hookers can use it on craigslist to avoid giving out their email address to
potential law enforcement, i suppose

~~~
makmanalp
It's not just them, anyone might need it. I'm sick of the "only <insert
socially unacceptable / bad figure> needs privacy" argument.

~~~
tptacek
Anyone might need it, but criminals are the ones likely to need it, and
therefore criminals will account for most of the site's usage. Just math.

