How many of you would be interested in keeping your "real" email private?
I try out so many services but tire of using either 10 minute mail (bad if you want to be able to carry on with a service) and if I use Gmail + accounts, I have still given the service the chance to "enrich" my lead and spam me to death with drip emails.
I'm building a reasonably priced (<$3/month) service that allows you to generate unique single-use forwarding emails every time you sign up to stuff online. A few developers I work with expressed enough interest to make it worth building a small MVP. Basically, you can keep your real "email" private, protect your privacy and have a simple means of keeping track and cutting the cord on services you no longer want to have spam or track you.
It feels like an easy privacy gain for little cost but maybe I have gone full tinfoil hat on this, so would love to hear if anyone here would also be interested in this or if I'm perhaps going down a dead end?
not my product, but I guess I saw it here at IH, check this out: https://burnermail.io
Thanks, yes I saw them earlier today actually. I guess what is interesting here is if they have 20k users, that's a reasonable community, but how many are not on the free plan?
Well if you check their IH product page, one of their milestones says they have 200 paying customers. just search for it here on IH. You can even contact them if you have questions :)
I think it’s a solid idea.
I may not be the right person to talk to about purchasing it (I run my own mail server so I just create new aliases from time to time) but email is one of the most powerful forms of communication we have, and anything that makes it better is welcome in my book.
I love seeing email-based solutions since it’s literally the only channel that everyone on the internet uses. Not everyone uses Slack, WhatsApp, FB, etc, but everyone has an email.
My take is this: an address is a means to be found, so keeping it private defeats the purpose. Advertisers will always have your email address, it's the consent they need.
If you're primarily dealing with drip email campaign, solutions exist (Gmail's Unsubscribe, Unroll, unsub footers) - albeit with more friction than this proposed tool.
I say roll it out for the fun/experience of doing it rather than hoping to make a buck - assuming you have time and energy to dedicate.
Thanks for the reply!
Sure, you can unsubscribe, but why should you even need to give services, advertisers etc your private info? I mean a unique email address per service that routes to your proper inbox firewalls your identity from services that really don't need it - does random SaaS startup need to know who you are to provide their service? Pretty much never the case.
so, go back to the days of username and disconnect online identity practices from email address.
Sure, but like jaryl states, don't hide the symptoms, address the root problem. When you state it that way, it's a lot easier to get what this tool would solve - so thanks for breaking it down!
Thanks - so you think if it is messaged as "Firewall your email inbox from third party services and advertisers" or something along those lines makes it clearer what the purpose is?
It seems more digestible for a newcomer like myself. Maybe an A/B campaign may answer the clarity question.
PS: Historically I used the [email protected] trick to categorize/filter in such cases, but recent email forms have validation that prevent use of '+'. The alternative is to permutate the dots
e.mail@ = em.ail@ = e.m.ail@but that gets old quickI pretty much wear the same tinfoil hat as you but I think that the solution is in the way that we provide services rather than tacking on a fix to the problems of email.
Here’s what I did to toot my own horn:
https://blog.mailyard.io/mailyard-goes-the-extra-mile-for-privacy/
What do you think?
Interesting approach - and glad to hear I'm not the only tinfoil hat wearer here ;)
I guess what I think is solved by the "email inbox firewall" approach I'm suggesting is that you don't need to wait for every third party to adopt privacy policies like yours (which let's face it, probably will never happen).
Apple is sort of creating a similar service but it requires you to have an Apple ID, and also for third party vendors to implement "Auth with Apple".
Single-use unique email addresses per service you sign up to basically blocks those services from monetising your data or identifying you easily (they can still send IP to Facebook Pixel for example, but preventing Facebook from using email address to match you is probably going to be a good means of increasing privacy).
Ah yes, what I am doing is actually to build something like Apple’s iCloud + Keychain, but for other developers to integrate.
I see the value in what you are creating, but I gave up protecting my email addresses long time ago, heh. Plus, email is becoming less relevant as days go by.
Thanks for the great discussion in here. I really appreciate the time people took. We decided that we'd put together an MVP really quickly, and we're already onboarding users. You can request access on our site at steamrant.com, if you're interested in checking it out. Thanks everyone! (Also thanks to Divjoy for the templates, a big time saver!)
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While this is certainly not a bad idea, I do think it is difficult to change people's behavior for something this fundamental. It seems similar to password managers to me from a marketing point of view. First you have to convince people they need it, then get them to use it. Not impossible, but certainly harder than selling something people are already convinced that they need.
I have a domain where I get the "catch all" address, meaning on the fly I can create any email address I want such as [email protected] etc. That meets my needs pretty well but of course non-techies won't have access to such an arrangement.
I think in order for your solution to be successful, 1) people would need to be able to create email addresses on the fly, without having to go to your site and add them first, and 2) there would need to be a set price for the service, not a price per email.
But with those caveats, I like the idea, though I haven't looked at your competitor(s).
I want to build a service like that and have some ideas for a bunch more features, do you want to partner up?
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I wouldn't use it. I just unsubscribe from anything I don't want, and if they ignore the unsubscribe request, I add a filter to delete. I've used my primary Gmail for years this way with no problems, I hardly get anything ever thru Gmail's built-in spam filter. It occasionally catches real email, but that's a separate issue.
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Thanks for the reply. Yup, have read The Mom Test.
I think this is better than having a separate Gmail that you use, simply because there should be less friction - you don't need to sign in/out of a random Gmail. You also are making it nigh on impossible to be identified. A standalone Gmail for all services might eventually provide enough pattern/signal for you to be enrichable. Added bonus is that you can get the email from services you want to get email from to your main inbox without needing to trade your privacy.
there is no, 1 junk email is good. I dont care if I’m receiving spam from advertiser A or B so no need to use two single use addresses. both can have my single static junk gmail and spam collectively.
although it’s a good idea worth thinking about, single junk gmail address is much better solution, unless OP proves us wrong with a case we skipped
This solution would mean you actually never need to give out your email to third parties. You can just keep your actual email for people you know. You will be able to mute any third parties who decide to abuse your mail. I mean I have a junk mailbox too, but I'd probably have used a service like this for my Netflix, HBO etc logins too. They don't need to know who I am, but I like to get their suggestion mails for example.