[thaumasiotes]

> Why don't people like you just spend exactly 2 minutes to create a bogus gmail (or etc) account for yourself

Have you tried doing this recently? Creating an email address has become a fairly draconian process.

[starttoaster]

Yeah, I just made a new google account today. It takes about 2 minutes. You need a birth date (easily lied about), a phone number (it's google, they have your phone number already, no reason to lie) where they will send you an 8 digit code for you to confirm, then type in your desired email address and your password. Hardly draconian. Viola, you have a gmail account. You can do more to ensure you're the only one that ever logs into it if you like, but chances are if you're setting this account up for the purpose we're talking about, you're just writing down the email address you set up and then forgetting everything else.

I'm not sure, are you implying that it is not worth doing this, and you would rather instead just pollute the inboxes of people that happen to know you? If so, would you like to be friends? I'd be happy to receive your junk emails if in exchange I can come by your place and just leave my trash in your front yard/driveway.

[gsich]

Phone number is draconian.

[charcircuit]

Google doesn't require a phone number if your ip / whatever they are doing to profile you has good reputation

[starttoaster]

Not that it’s really all that draconian anyway. Tying an address to some other piece of verifiable information is valuable when they probably have to respond to abuse complaints for thousands of gmail addresses every week.

[JoshTriplett]

If you want an account for legitimate mail, fastmail and gandi both make it trivial to add another email alias.

If you want an account for random garbage that demands an email address, use mailinator.