Yahoo Launches Disposable Email Addresses

from the that-old-technique? dept

Yahoo has jumped on the disposable email address bandwagon. Following the lead of tons of smaller offerings, such as Sneakemail, Yahoo has launched a "premium" service, which will let users create up to 500 "variations" on their email address, which can be used as disposable email addresses for online signups and purchases. It also sounds like they're adding a whitelist option for those who want it. I'm not sure the disposable addresses alone make it worth signing up for - especially since some of the other disposable email solutions out there are free - but, it is good to see them offering a variety of tools for users to defeat spam.
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  • identicon
    Kevin, 21 Oct 2003 @ 1:42am

    Am I the only one who sees a problem?


    First of all, this is almost an exact copy of sneakemail's key system, rather a simple subset of it and not really a very good fit as it is in a true disposable address service.

    Spammers only have to go through their list of spam addresses, look for any yahoo address with a "-" in it, and then change it. If the yahoo address is base-techdirt@yahoo.com they only have to modify it a little, maybe throw in the monthday like base-techdirt1021@yahoo.com. By doing this they can still continue spamming that account until the user has to change the base, which would cut off their other messages.

    What am I missing here, isnt this doomed to fail?

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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