[garrettdimon]

My feelings are that trust is a two-way street. If people don't trust us with their email address, I don't think it's fair for them to expect us to trust them with an account on our service if they provide a fake email address.

If they are serious about evaluating our product, they can provide a real email address. If they aren't very serious or inherently don't trust us, then I'm willing to miss the opportunity of having them as a customer.

I respect their privacy, because we don't spam, sell, or abuse any of these email addresses ever, but I find it hard to trust anyone with an account on our service if they use a fake email address. Personally, when I sign up for services, I find it helpful to gauge the company based on how they use my email. If they automatically start sending me marketing materials the next day, that tells me a lot, and I'll generally cancel the service and report all of the subsequent marketing emails from them as spam. The only way to do that effectively is if I use a real email address.

Do people use these fake inboxes for any reason other than trying to prevent or cut down on spam? Am I overlooking some key aspect of allowing people to use these email addresses?

[nwh]

> If people don't trust us with their email address, I don't think it's fair for them to expect us to trust them with an account on our service if they provide a fake email address.

I've not used a single website that hasn't flooded me with "email newsletters", "promotions" and "reminders". Even my damn utility companies (each on their unique addresses) both sold and spammed the address I gave them with the stuff.

There is no trust.

[LiveTheDream]

Why should a potential customer be willing to trust you with their email address? Perhaps you are very respectful of their privacy, but already their trust has been violated plenty of times by other, less honest companies. "One bitten, twice shy" and all that.

[garrettdimon]

I'm not claiming that they should trust us. I'm only saying that it works both ways, and that we as business owners have a choice about whether to trust potential customers just as much as they have a choice about whether or not to trust us.

It might be anachronistic, but if a potential customer wants to begin a relationship with us with a lie, then of the two of us, I would think we have more reason to mistrust that individual than they have to mistrust us. Their mistrust is based on projecting bad behavior of other companies onto us whereas our mistrust is based on them actively beginning the relationship with a lie.

Of course, this decision may cost us some potential customers, but for now, that's something that we're willing to accept.

[josscrowcroft]

> "trust is a two-way street. If people don't trust us with their email address, I don't think it's fair for them to expect us to trust them with an account on our service"

Solid justification for disallowing them. My service doesn't even send a reply-verification to users (but Free users get a CAPTCHA... sadly) and just assumes validity. Perhaps I ought to integrate it at some point, but personally I hate having to click to verify my email address. Comes back to trust, again.

[jeremyjh]

If you don't need their email address why do you even ask for it? In my mind reply-verification is mostly for account recovery purposes. If they fat-finger their email address they will never know it until they also forget their password. At least, that is what I experienced on the one app I deployed that didn't verify email addresses (but did need to send notifications to them).