It worked, some of my friends were using it, but I never really improved on it although it was always in the back of my mind to do so at some point. So December 2020 seemed like a good time to do this.
I completely rebuilt it, but again, did not really expect that there will come much of it, it is really just for myself. It seemed that the problem I was solving was really just a problem that I had.
But then Apple announced their Hide My Email (albeit just on Apple devices) service at WWDC 21. I was like: "Hey, if Apple thinks there is something here, maybe other people would start thinking about it too."
I want to continue building on this; I've had some ideas (browser extensions, Mobile, business plan, etc. etc.) that I want to implement sooner rather than later. There is a small fee for using the service and I believe that there may now be some people, non-Apple or otherwise users, who would start to see the value of this and be willing to pay for this service.
I have not tried Apple's Hide My Email, but I think what makes Mailphantom different is that:
1. You can reply to an email; and
2. You can also add your own custom domain which only you will have access to
No I do not keep any emails, and a valid concern for sure.
I mean I do not have an easy way to show anyone. But I have thought about how to deal with such a request, and my thinking was to have a video call with someone and show. For the moment that is how I would solve that. Not ideal but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The only way to relieve yourself of the burden of proof is by never having the actual emails of anybody. Would it be possible to offer your service under that constraint? That would be extremely cool!
I hide my email address by using Fastmail which supports wildcard users e.g. *@example.com so I can effortlessly assign a unique email address to anyone who asks for one.
FYI, after years of running this experiment I’ve found that vendors don’t tend to share their email address lists. One of the only exceptions that comes to mind is someone scraping my LinkedIn email for e-commerce marketing.
I've done exactly they same for many years via email aliases in MS Exchange. I too discovered that the only real sharing/leaking of email addresses was my paypal and ebay ones, and a legacy one that I used to use on USEnet back when we all didn't know better.
My take-away was: always proxy ebay/paypal accounts behind another mail provider, and be ready to change those emails when they get compromised.
I've gotten a fair few emails to my address used for git commits also. Doubt each recruiter is compiling it manually, but someone must have built a script that cloned git repos and inspected the data, as I don't think GitHub shows it in the UI
That's true. you can also put .keys or .gpg on the end of a user profile to get ssh or gpg public keys respectively (also works for GitLab). I guess I've always just considered such routes to be part of the API since they're not linked in the UI
I'd love to see a simple browser addon that takes care of generating an email for new sites, because there are several similar services out there and I think on all of them you have to manually go generate an email.
Kind of a silly preference maybe because it's still easy to do manually, but it would make the paid service more attractive I think.
Yes, they do employ a quite holistic view on online privacy; requiring you to put a lot of trust in them. I did not intend to diminish the value of your service.
This reminds me of anonaddy.com. It's free for some basic features which I've used and I'd highly suggest it. You can use fake emails to avoid spam and turn them on, off, or eliminate them entirely.
Great for a particular watch store that LOVES to sell your data.
Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. This appears to be a commercial site that requires an account and payment up front.
It worked, some of my friends were using it, but I never really improved on it although it was always in the back of my mind to do so at some point. So December 2020 seemed like a good time to do this.
I completely rebuilt it, but again, did not really expect that there will come much of it, it is really just for myself. It seemed that the problem I was solving was really just a problem that I had.
But then Apple announced their Hide My Email (albeit just on Apple devices) service at WWDC 21. I was like: "Hey, if Apple thinks there is something here, maybe other people would start thinking about it too."
I want to continue building on this; I've had some ideas (browser extensions, Mobile, business plan, etc. etc.) that I want to implement sooner rather than later. There is a small fee for using the service and I believe that there may now be some people, non-Apple or otherwise users, who would start to see the value of this and be willing to pay for this service.
I have not tried Apple's Hide My Email, but I think what makes Mailphantom different is that:
1. You can reply to an email; and 2. You can also add your own custom domain which only you will have access to