Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I've wondered more than once if our contact information should be more like Apple's hidden emails - generated for the specific person or business we want to be able to contact us, and revocable - with a public fallback which is expected to go to a voicemail of some sort.


My personal data has been part of 2 major leaks so I'd definitely pay for this feature. I already use a service which generates random emails and forwards it to my primary email address so having such a service for phone numbers would be a great idea.


I use Firefox Relay, it's great. (Unique email address for each website)

Unfortunately some businesses have started marking them as spam because they don't like not having the direct personal email of each user


That has nothing to do with it.

Businesses block fake email generators because they’re overwhelmingly used by fraudsters/spammers/etc trying to abuse systems.

Anybody who’s ever run an internet service that allows open registration or has a free plan knows this the hard way.


Exactly. They want to only have direct personal emails so that if someone is a spammer they can easily be blocked/banned. And so that there are consequences for spamming. This is sort of the same principle as KYC.


It is an immutable law of commerce that any effort (be it legal, technical or otherwise) to protect people from obnoxious and/or harmful behavior by businesses will be fought tooth and nail by obnoxious and/or harmful businesses.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: