
Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service - r0hitSehgal
https://github.com/r0hi7/Trashemail
======
newscracker
Feedback for the OP: I didn't understand how this works, and am reluctant to
start a bot just to figure it out. It would be helpful if you could add some
screenshots showing how email address creation, deletion and email receipt
work (please do not use GIFs, just a set of static images are enough).

Tangentially on Telegram bots, _one of the things_ I dislike with privacy on
Telegram is that the user ID (an internal Telegram generated number, not to be
confused with your chosen username) given to bots is static. It's not an ID
per bot and there's no way to change the ID without deleting your Telegram
account and creating it again later (I'm not sure if it changes then either).
Bots can also see and save your name (as entered on the profile) on Telegram.
This makes it easier for bots (or bot swarms) to track users on Telegram.
(AFAIK, Telegram bots don't get the phone number of the user; it'd be terrible
if they did).

~~~
r0hitSehgal
Sure, Will definitely take this into account.

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miki123211
Telegram is such an underappreciated platform. It has many features other
platforms lack, is reasonably privacy-friendly, more so than fb/whatsapp/etc,
but not enough to sacrifice features or UX. The have an API ind both official
and unofficial clients for almost all platforms, including command line and
native, non-electron Windows (UWP). The client API is not easy to use, as
crypto and similar features are involved, but C libraries exist. On the other
hand, the bot API is one of the most pleasant APIs I've ever seen. It just
works, can be tested in the browser, there's no oAuth crap one needs to set
up. It's beautifully simple. I use Telegram whenever I can, and it has become
my goto Messenger these days.

~~~
SXX

       > It has many features other platforms lack, is reasonably privacy-friendly
    

Telegram still has no E2E encryption by default and their official desktop
client dont have it either. So it's worth nothing if no one use it. It's not
that I have much trust into proprietary fb code, but there are certainly
better apps privacy-wise out there.

~~~
solarkraft
> there are certainly better apps privacy-wise out there

With significantly worse UX.

> still has no E2E encryption by default

This doesn't make it not reasonably secure in my mind. While the TG people
will be able to access your messages, they can also process them, making stuff
like large groups even possible (imagine the distribution hell otherwise).

I do tend to think that there's not much of a down side to E2E for private
chats though, since you can still share private keys between devices to enable
sync.

> So it's worth nothing if no one use it.

Telegram is way more than secret chats.

~~~
jolux
> This doesn't make it not reasonably secure in my mind. While the TG people
> will be able to access your messages, they can also process them, making
> stuff like large groups even possible (imagine the distribution hell
> otherwise).

So your standard for “reasonably secure” communications is Facebook Messenger?

~~~
solarkraft
No. You're using the same "if it's not perfect it's worthless" argumentation
as GP.

It's not perfect, nothing is. But it makes better compromises than others.

~~~
jolux
It’s worthless as a “secure messenger.” They can read and store all the
messages unless you use the E2E mode.

------
kirubakaran
Remember the old Zawinski's Law? "Every program attempts to expand until it
can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones
which can."

In 2020, r/mail/chat/g

Telegram is such a great messenger to integrate with. It is basically just
"import telegram" and you're almost done. I built the Telegram integration for
Histre in just a weekend: [https://histre.com/blog/take-notes-with-
telegram/](https://histre.com/blog/take-notes-with-telegram/) This lets you
take notes on Telegram either directly or via share intent, so that you can
save links etc from your phone without installing another app. I think I also
watched a movie and went for a hike that weekend, so it's not like it was an
intense weekend of furious typing.

I wish other messengers made it as easy. I'd love to integrate with Signal,
and probably will do so soon, as a good number of my users are on Signal. But
the number of steps listed just makes it easy to put it off for later.

If you haven't integrated Telegram with your app yet, I'd suggest you look
into it. You'd be surprised how easy it is.

I think the sane and simple API approach is going to make Telegram eat all
other messengers. But I'm a programmer, so maybe I just want that to be true
;)

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stanislavb
The problem with disposable mail is that it gets blocked quite often. For
example, I have a list with more than 3000 domains of disposable mail servers
and you can’t register or comment with such a mail on saashub.com or
libhunt.com

~~~
mobilio
Is this list public?

I would like to take a look on it.

~~~
nsgf
Not op.

You can use something like this.
[https://github.com/FGRibreau/mailchecker](https://github.com/FGRibreau/mailchecker)

------
Abishek_Muthian
Good work.

I was thinking about building a tool with opposite functionality - Getting
chat messages delivered on email.

Reason - To switch to a full-linux based phone, as clients for those platforms
aren't available. I rarely use chat message so, intuitiveness is not the
concern. But when I do get a message, I would like it to be delivered via an
encrypted email service.

Little thought went into this - Parsing messages from web app of the
respective chat apps on a SBC.

~~~
r0hitSehgal
Would you like to collaborate in this ? I would be happy to work with you on
that.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
I appreciate the offer, I'll help in the way I can; but my coding time is very
limited due to the health conditions.

email: abishek.muthian[]protonmail[]

------
OJFord
Why doesn't AWS SES allow generating receiving addresses without giving a
domain, like `<uuid>@inbound.ses.amazonaws.com` or something - there wouldn't
be a reputational risk if it was incoming only right? That would be awesome.

(The more common use case might be 'contact us' forms, for example, where you
want to accept something as an email, but the address isn't user-facing so
doesn't need a domain.)

------
vezycash
First, this bot doesn't work. I was using this
[https://etlgr.io](https://etlgr.io) for disposable emails and it worked no
stress.

My Outlook app kept getting closed by android and I kept missing emails. So I
created a disposable etlgr email to get bank notifications. Created a rule in
Outlook.com to send balance notifications anytime money enters or leaves my
account.

Also a few times when discussing with clients, sent the email title to the
bot.

A few months back, there was one "a page a day" book reading service that came
on hacker news. Created an email just for it.

Another to receive manga notifications.

Etlgr recently became a subscription service and that was the end.

MY OTHER USES FOR TELEGRAM

RSS feed reader for sites. Also created a private channel for my friends that
posts 100% free udemy courses. It's been completely hands off for over a year
now.

Why Telegram Rocks

My telegram account is accessible from 4 different devices - Two phones and
two laptops (6 client apps).

Could switch off the phone with the number registered to telegram and I'll
still be able to chat. With WhatsApp this is impossible.

I could lose my sim card, both phones and one laptop. But if I still have
access to one client, I can login on fresh devices.

This is because once you're registered, telegram sends the OTP to the
installed clients instead of SMS.

One awesome stuff they do is that after a successful logon on a new device,
the notification is broadcast to all logged in client apps. Deleting the
notification in one device will not remove it in others.

Making it harder for account takeovers to happen stealthily.

Also newly logged in clients cannot terminate older sessions.

CHATTING

The ability to edit already sent text in telegram is awesome. Make a mistake?
Correct it.

Telegram does not leave a "deleted" stamp when you delete a message unlike
WhatsApp.

In telegram you can delete everything in your chats from the other person's
device.

WhatsApp allows you to delete your chats from the other person's phone.
Telegram tops that by allowing you to delete the other person's words from
their own phone!

Without this, quoted chats will have empty placeholders alerting the other
party.

FILE SIZE Limit

Up to 1.5GB per file

Telegram Rocks.

~~~
r0hitSehgal
Oh this is exactly the same service that i tried to build. Does this enforces
privacy ? They have some pricy model, so seems like they would be definitely
keeping some ads out their in free version. But yeah thanks for letting this
know, i will check this out.

------
rmsaksida
Cool idea for a bot. Suggestion: the UI could use more polish. You can use a
conversational UI instead of `/create <email>`, `/delete <email>`. Also, it
would be nice to have a command that generates a random user ID instead of
having to type something in.

~~~
r0hitSehgal
I will definitely take this into account sir :)

------
gruez
What’s the point of implementing this as a telegram bot rather than a website?
I guess it’s a USP, considering there are hundreds of disposable email
websites out there, but I don’t see how it enhances the user experience.

~~~
rmsaksida
In my case it's convenience. I have Telegram open most of the day and
occasionally I use bots for small tasks that could be done elsewhere, but bots
offer a more streamlined experience.

~~~
gruez
I get the concept, but I don't see how it applies to this use case. Both
web/bot has the same workflow.

web: open browser -> find website in bookmarks -> copy email -> do whatever
you need to do with it -> switch back to the website to check for emails

bot: open telegram -> find bot in chat history -> tell it to generate a new
address -> copy it -> do whatever you need to do with it -> switch back to the
app to check for emails

The only case I could think of a bot being useful is for semi-permanent email.
ie. using the same email address for weeks/months, rather than one time only.

------
tgdn
I'm not sure how this works, I installed the bot, sent /start

No reply yet.

~~~
noxer
The bot is simply down. I would say 90% of all bots are down all the time and
most of them completely go offline within the first 3 months.

There are a lot of reasons for that. like \- no revenue \- made by beginners
with no scalability in mind so it simply cant handle the traffic if a bot gets
popular \- lose of interest in developing if it doesn't "blow up" soon \-
every good idea is instantly copied especially if the code is public there
will be clones all over the place. \- no official way to promote your bot.
Most large groups will directly ban you if you tell em about the bot you made.
Some even have bots to auto-ban if you name another bot. Everything is
considered advertising/spam very toxic behavior in a lot groups. As with
everything free on the internet there are the 0.1% who create and all other
consume and give back nothing.

Source: I'm on Telegram since nearly day one. I run roughly a dozen completely
free to use bots since many years. Some of them with thousands of daily users.

~~~
r0hitSehgal
I will definitely try to keep this up running for the longer term. Also I have
not planned to make this monetary and keep it free from advertisement. I know
initially things are slow, but I have jumped in to the game with long
commitment. Also the source code is completely written by me and the
motivation was to learn spring boot. I have not copied it :) And thanks for
taking some time to review it. I really appreciate that.

~~~
noxer
Thats great! If you have any trouble or questions about telegram bots/the bot
API I suggest you to join
[https://t.me/BotDevelopment](https://t.me/BotDevelopment)

------
canada_dry
[https://telegram.me/DropmailBot](https://telegram.me/DropmailBot)

How does this bot differ from this existing one?

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solarkraft
Thanks! There are other services like this out there, but they're all sketchy
(the one I tried spams you with ads).

~~~
r0hitSehgal
I don't have such intentions, the main reason to make this open source was
this only. Even i hate ads, and I know every one does. Currently the bot is
down, I will definitely work on this to get this fixed tomorrow. And once this
is fixed the bot will be healthy.

------
r0hitSehgal
For now due to certificate issues with Telegram, Bot is not working, I will
check the issues with the bot tomorrow, and will try to resolve it. Till than
thanks for taking time to review it :) I really appreciate everyone's effort.

------
r0hitSehgal
Bot is up again :), the issue got finally resolved :)

