
Ask HN: Good throw-away email service? - jonahx
Signing up somewhere, I often find myself wishing for an email that:<p>1. I can create instantly (as many as I want)<p>2. Will forward to my real email<p>3. Can be turned off later<p>4. Won&#x27;t expire until I turn it off<p>Most temporary email services give you an expiring inbox that self-destructs after X hours.  But I want to control the destruction myself.<p>Any recommendations for services or libraries for building this myself against my own domain?
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WorldMaker
[https://mailinator.com/](https://mailinator.com/) is an interesting option.
Lots of domain names to use and you can easily point your own domain names' MX
records at it. Meets (1) and (4), with the precaution that it's a "public
blog" approach to email and that anyone with the address and the knowledge it
is hosted at Mailinator can check recent posts to that inbox. (Which is often
perfectly fine for throw-away spam inboxes.) The mailbox itself doesn't
expire, but items in it will.

For (2)/(3), if you register for an account you get a semi-private inbox that
you can forward to your real email, but it is a step. I think if you upgrade
plans you can set-up something more automated, but the current pricing page is
surprisingly light on details from what I remember.

------
arh68
FastMail offers _aliases_ to do exactly this [1].

You can send & receive directly from/to your main inbox (you get a dropdown
when you send to select your From: address). You can make 10 aliases with a
Full account; it goes up to 600 w/ higher accounts [2].

[1]
[https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/aliases.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/aliases.html)

[2]
[https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/limits.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/limits.html)

------
oarsinsync
I was giving this some thought and my initial reaction was to suggest a Gmail
account with +aliases, e.g. mythrowaway@gmail.com, and then use
mythrowaway+whateveralias@gmail.com combined with a forwarding filter.

I then saw the 'own domain' requirement leading me to think Google Apps will
let you do this (for money), and you could use a catch-all alias rather than
having to use +subaddressing.

That said, if you want to use your own domain _and_ host it yourself, you
could easily do this on something as small as a Raspberry Pi with
exim/postfix, and just update /etc/aliases as required.

example /etc/aliases file:

    
    
      throwaway1: realaddyaliassecret
      throwaway2: realaddyaliassecret
      throwaway3: realaddyaliassecret
      throwaway4: realaddyaliassecret
      realaddyaliassecret: myrealaddress@yahoo.com
    
    

Note that you don't need to use a 'realaddyaliassecret', it just makes life a
bit easier than having to always type in your real email address. And when
you're done with a throwaway, just remove the entry from your aliases file,
and messages should now bounce.

Shouldn't be particularly difficult to build a nicer front end too, cli or
webbased.

EDIT: all of this now has me wondering why I haven't done this for myself
already, given how simple it is. Thanks for the idea!

~~~
jonahx
The problem with gmail + emails is that it's well-known those are aliases, and
anywhere you signup can just strip the "+xxx" part to get your permanent
address.

~~~
oarsinsync
Sorry, I may not have been sufficiently clear, you'd register a new throwaway
gmail address, and then create forwarding filters based on throwaway+alias. At
that point, it doesn't matter if $badsite strips the +alias and learns your
email is throwaway@gmail, you're not forwarding mail sent to that address
anyway.

Anyway, I'm probably going to register a throwaway domain to use for
disposable email per my final suggestion, so thanks for the post!

~~~
jonahx
I see. Yeah, that would work. Although the process of setting up the
forwarding wouldn't be just inconvenient enough that I wouldn't use it most of
the time, I think.

------
i336_
Of all things, Outlook. It lets you create aliases that you can delete at any
time.

By "alias", I mean _entirely separate @outlook.com email account_.

Once it's set up, you can either

\- Create a rule ("Recipient contains", <new email account>) to to for example
delete email sent to that account, if you don't want to lose the alias

\- Delete the alias - I do NOT know if you can reregister it in future, if it
gets reserved, or what happens here.

Aliases: outlook.com > Gear icon (top-right) > Options > "Create alias" \- 2nd
from the bottom, first section

Rules: Gear icon > Manage rules

NOTE! You can also setup forwarding w/ Outlook, but Options > "Manage
forwarding" mentions "Please sign in at least once every 365 days—otherwise
your account looks inactive and could be deleted."

------
atonparker
[https://throttlehq.com](https://throttlehq.com) provides a service similar to
what you're looking for. The free tier forwards daily "digests", but the paid
tier will do direct forwarding using your own domain. I definitely think
there's an opportunity for a similar open source self-hosted solution.

------
justinlardinois
I host my main email address (me@justinlardinois.com) and have a catchall set
up that forwards all other usernames to me. Whenever I sign up for a service,
I give them thisservice@justinlardinois.com, and if it starts getting abused I
can just add that username to the list of /dev/null recipients.

------
Gustomaximus
You could easily use Gmail. Just add text to define the separate throwaway
email. e.g. jane.doe@gmail.com becomes jane.doe+throwawayemail@gmail.com

When you want to turn it off just filter out the name combination you created.

Adding text:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/12096?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/12096?hl=en)

Filter gmails:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6579?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6579?hl=en)

~~~
bbcbasic
I am guessing this works well if you bounce or mark as spam anything sent to
the main non-prefixed email address i.e. throwawayemail@gmail.com and prefix
with guids or something unguessable.

~~~
Gustomaximus
Yep. I use a similar format/method as suggested to hold multiple accounts,
track lead generation and what companies do with personal data.

E.g john.doe+competitionwebsitedotcom_20160502@gmail.com

------
olympus
Hushmail sounds like what you want:
[https://www.hushmail.com/personal/features/?source=website&t...](https://www.hushmail.com/personal/features/?source=website&tag=page_personal,btn_features)

But it costs $50 per year. You didn't mention that you want free, but I
figured that I'd mention the cost. Hushmail includes some extra privacy
features that you didn't ask for, but it does do the things you asked for,
like the unlimited email accounts (aliases) and no expiration.

------
calvins
There is spamgourmet
([https://www.spamgourmet.com/index.pl](https://www.spamgourmet.com/index.pl)).
It doesn't satisfy 4 exactly, but it's pretty close. If you give out an email
like 'foo.20.myusername@spamgourmet.com' (there are other domains too), then
it'll forward 20 emails to the configured email for your account, but you can
always log in and set it to 0 remaining at any point, regardless of how many
emails have been received.

------
_xander
ProtonMail might be up your street. It fulfils points 1-4. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_provider...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_providers)

As I side note, I agree that the most popular email providers are sorely
lacking the friendliness that they used to have. So many of them require
mobile phone activation and expire early, which is super unhelpful if you want
a throw-away account.

------
tmaly
I have a vps that I host a few domains on. I did not want to have to deal with
the email aspect, so what I did was point the DNS to a shared hosting provider
I also use that gives me unlimited domains. They have a really great email
operations setup so they prevent people from sending spam etc. It is important
for me at least because I do not want my email address or vps ip blacklisted.

------
fosco
[http://jetable.org/en/index](http://jetable.org/en/index)

only meets # 1 and #2 but a 1 month expiration is pretty long and easy to just
create another.

just my two cents.

------
Arubis
[https://sneakemail.com](https://sneakemail.com) does what you want and has
been around for over 15 years. It also supports greylisting, generation of
temporary email addresses based on keywords, disabling and re-enabling of
temporary addresses, multiple rulesets, tweakable everything. Freemium model.

------
jordansmith
I use one of my personal domains that has catch all email setup.

So I can do a@domain.com and b@domain.com. Both will show up in my inbox.

------
mbrock
I used a Node library to make a trivial SMTP server that just sends everything
it gets to a Slack channel.

If you're interested I can publish the repo, all you need is Node or Docker
and a Slack webhook URL, and preferably a domain name for your server. (The A
record is fine, you don't need to setup an MX.)

------
cpncrunch
I just use /etc/aliases, and create a new alias for each service that don't
fully trust not to spam me.

Alternatively you can just set up a different gmail account for each. Then
just add the account to your gmail app on your android phone, and it will
automatically check all the accounts.

------
Frozenlock
I'll piggyback on this and ask what HN is using to block those pesky
disposable email addresses.

I offer FREE stuff in exchange of an email address (which can be removed
immediately after), but I still get disposable emails, which is kind of
aggravating.

~~~
jlgaddis
> _but I still get disposable emails, which is kind of aggravating._

From the other side:

So is giving up my e-mail address to receive something, knowing I'm going to
get e-mail later about other things that I don't want (a.k.a. "spam", to some
people).

I run my own mail servers, though, so I just create a new alias for
everything, such as these one-off "give us your e-mail and we'll give you x"
offers. I generally don't delete them afterwards, though, unless and until I
start receiving other unrelated e-mails. Then, they get deleted (technically:
timestamped and marked inactive in the database) and after a year they
"reactivate" and become spamtraps.

------
mbangert
[https://github.com/jhillyerd/inbucket](https://github.com/jhillyerd/inbucket)

You will need to modify the configuration a bit for the message purge feature
to not take into effect.

------
trampish
I have been using the free tier of Mailgun for this.
[http://www.mailgun.com/](http://www.mailgun.com/)

I use routes and rules to create throwaways on my own domains when necessary.

------
merel
[https://www.emailondeck.com](https://www.emailondeck.com)

------
denzil_correa
I think Blur fulfills all of your requirements

[https://www.abine.com/maskme/emails/](https://www.abine.com/maskme/emails/)

------
koolba
Check out 33mail: [http://www.33mail.com/](http://www.33mail.com/)

I believe it's exactly what you're looking for.

------
acesubido
Have you tried [https://www.sharklasers.com/](https://www.sharklasers.com/)?

------
godzillabrennus
Buy a domain from Google.com/domains or transfer one in and you can setup
email forwarding from the control panel for free.

------
dancablam
[http://boun.cr](http://boun.cr) is exactly what you described.

------
sid-kap
[http://maildrop.cc/](http://maildrop.cc/)

------
cheiVia0
gmx.com offers up to 10 email aliases at a time for free. So of you're signing
up for something from which you don't want to receive emails, use one of the
aliases until it starts getting spam. Then delete it and create a new one.

