Subject: [Asrg] Disposable short-term E-mail addresses

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 03:06:12 -0500

Here's an interesting approach.

A company is offering free "disposable" E-mail addresses... but unlike 
Yahoo/Hotmail/etc, these are short-duration E-mail addresses that self-destruct 
after a short time (1-8 days).

You give them your "real" E-mail address (which they promise not to sell...?) 
and how long you want it to last, and they generate a "disposable" E-mail 
address which will forward to your real one for the indicated lifespan.

The obvious use is when you "need" to give your E-mail address to some Website 
or something for them to send something to you (say, a login password or 
confirmation code or something) but where you maybe don't trust them to not 
abuse that E-mail address in the future.

It's analogous to the credit card issuers who will give you a single-use credit 
card number (linked to your "real" credit card issued by them), perhaps limited 
to a maximum charge of $10 and just once, that you can give to (say) site 
operators who "promise" to use the credit card number "only to verify adult 
status" or even promise not to charge it at all.  That way, you have a 
(crippled) "real" credit card number to give them but where it is largely or 
totally immune to identity theft or other forms of abuse.

Since this "disposable" E-mail address cannot be used for sending mail out (only 
TO/THROUGH it) it would seem relatively hard to abuse... other than, I suppose, 
as an E-mail address for a fraudster to use in their "Nigerian spam" or 
something. (and there I don't suppose it's much if any worse than existing 
freeware disposable Web-based mail accounts).

Their Web site, by the way, is http://jetable.com  (the domain name is based on 
the French word for "disposable").

Anybody have any thoughts on this one?  Boon or bane?  Useful, or dangerous?

Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002  Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support the Anti-SPAM Amendment!  Join at http://www.cauce.org/
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.

_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

---

From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 17:38:50 -0400

At 03:06 AM 7/1/2003 -0500, [email-masked] wrote:

>[..]

Interesting concepts but two thoughts come up: what do they do about 
privacy and what happens when addresses are reused?

Yakov

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 20:12:14 -0500

>privacy 

They discuss that at their Web site, I think, but I didn't bother to go there 
(since I wasn't personally all that likely to use their service...)

> and what happens when addresses are reused?

I'd presume that they NEVER reuse them.