[nubela]

These are usually domains that belong to a disposable email service, be it public or private.

I maintain a 100% free API [1] to check if an email belongs to a disposable email service. We dogfood the same API endpoint to prevent users who abuse disposable emails to create fake accounts for free trial credits.

We use the domains found at https://www.stopforumspam.com/downloads amongst other sources of data. Works pretty well. We have close to eliminated fake account registration with the use of Recaptcha.

[1]: https://nubela.co/proxycurl/disposable-email-checker-api

[uallo]

> We dogfood the same API endpoint to prevent users who abuse disposable emails to create fake accounts for free trial credits.

I usually use disposable emails to test services but don't want to be spammed. Often, I later upgrade to a paid plan if I like the service. If they block disposable email addresses, I will not even try them at all.

[r1ch]

Why does your API want the full email address? That becomes a privacy liability as surely the domain alone is enough.

[8organicbits]

Could be for aliases. [e-mail] routes to [e-mail], but you may prefer to only allow a single account for foo@.

[krageon]

Congratulations, you make the internet worse for actual humans and better for corporations. Making the world a net worse place, for everyone that matters.

[nikanj]

I use a disposable email address because I don’t want the organization to have my email. Thank you for making that harder.

[jstanley]

What exactly is "fake" about an account one creates with a disposable email address?

[8organicbits]

I suspect "fake" is the wrong word, maybe "very low reputation" is better. The parent post discusses avoiding giving unlimited free trials to people who just keep creating new accounts. You'll want to restrict that, especially if each trial costs a non-trivial amount of money. Efficiently detecting such abuse allows the company to offer generous free trials.

A side effect is that a small number of people who use disposable email addresses to manage the spam they receive will also be blocked (see other comments). A business looking at this issue may find it hard to prioritize, the group is small, and they can choose to use a non-disposable address if they want to continue.

[uallo]

The group of people that go through the hassle of signing up and setting up everything again to avoid paying is probably equally small. If the account setup is so frictionless that a lot of people do it again and again, you should work on adding benefits to loyal accounts instead of banning new users.

[8organicbits]

You can actually check how many users it impacts by watching how the bounce rate changes after a user with a disposable email address is told their address isn't accepted. Adjust course based on your metrics.

[shmde]

> We dogfood the same API endpoint to prevent users who abuse disposable emails to create fake accounts for free trial credits.

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

[corentin88]

Curious about how did you built this? Do you maintain an internal list of domains?