Open-source disposable email service

[hannob]

There's a security problem with this and many other such services. Writing this here hoping that this increases knowledge about this:

I would be able to get a TLS certificate for this host. Why? Some TLS certificate providers allow verifying the domain via access to one of the privileged aliases like postmaster. So I could receive the verification token URL by looking at the postmaster inbox.

Every service offering any type of email inbox should block these aliases. They are ‘admin’, ‘administrator’, ‘webmaster’, ‘hostmaster’, ‘postmaster’. This is specified in the so-called Baseline Requirements, which is the standard for the operation of certificate authorities: https://cabforum.org/baseline-requirements-documents/

[voytec]

RFC 2142: Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and Functions [1]

    MAILBOX        SERVICE             SPECIFICATIONS
    -----------    ----------------    ---------------------------
    POSTMASTER     SMTP                [RFC821], [RFC822]
    HOSTMASTER     DNS                 [RFC1033-RFC1035]
    USENET         NNTP                [RFC977]
    NEWS           NNTP                Synonym for USENET
    WEBMASTER      HTTP                [RFC 2068]
    WWW            HTTP                Synonym for WEBMASTER
    UUCP           UUCP                [RFC976]
    FTP            FTP                 [RFC959]

[1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2142

[sigio]

A CAA dns record will most likely prevent tbat, just set it to your preferred CA tgat doesn't do mail-based validation.

[solatic]

I imagine this domain will quickly end up on lists like this one: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/forms/what-domains-are-blocked...

The real value here is the opening of the source code. Set up a cheap domain, set up a cheap VPS, use Tailscale or similar to keep the web UI private, then you're good.

[themoonisachees]

You don't need such things.

You can simply register a domain on domains.google, and they give you email aliases with each domain. The trick is that while you are limited to 5 aliases, you can define the * alias and it will redirect any mail recieved at that domain. The mail then ends up in your mailbox, but you can easily block adresses that do too much while not breaking the workflow of recieving emails you want.

[blowski]

What a fascinating list. It’s effectively guessing whether something is a business email, given that it’s blocking domains like gmail.com, outlook.com, fastmail.com, and yahoo.com.

[kanary]

Do you plan to shuffle the domain? If this hits scale, sites pretty quickly blacklist domains. imo anonaddy is best at scale but still gets blocked.

[mdaniel]

this is not "open source," it's source available as the repo is missing any licensing terms. I dunno what the legal standing is of these package management fields <https://github.com/psarna/edgemail/blob/master/Cargo.toml#L5> since I believe at least npm defaults to some very liberal license that almost no one looks at any further and puts a sibling license file in their repo with the actual terms

Also, bold move implementing your own smtpd: https://github.com/psarna/edgemail/blob/master/src/smtp.rs#L...

[yawpitch]

Pretty sure that, legally speaking, an author publicly declaring that a piece of publicly published work is offered as open source, coupled in this case with also indicating (albeit indirectly and not obviously) via the Cargo.toml that the work is specifically licensed under “MIT OR Apache”, is more than sufficient to block them from ever successfully pursuing someone else for damages under their copyright for use consistent with those indicated licenses. That declaration effectively does make this “open source” under the plain meaning of that term — the source is openly available, and the author’s clear and openly stated intent is that it is offered as openly available under specific licensure terms — what it probably (or at least properly) is not is “Open Source” per the definition of the OSI.

The author should certainly clarify the license terms if they want this to be widely used, but though I wouldn’t use this for MANY reasons, not one of them is fear of having violated the author’s copyrights.

[burnished]

So the absence of a license means it defaults to exclusive copy right, but can advertising it as open source be construed as a 'license'? Or more broadly can express written or verbal permission count?

Just interested in it hypothetically, in practice specifying a license in the text seems like a no brainer

[avinassh]

I believe this comment prompted a discussion on the repo and now it has a valid license. So, that's a win

[usr1106]

For incoming mail this is easy to do yourself if you have a little root server with a decent subdomain (the domain does not even need to be owned by you)

But for outgoing mail that requires real work / knowledge / full control over your DNS records. Recently gmail has stopped to accept any email without SPF/DKIM.

[ipaddr]

So not having SPF/DKIM setup could be considered a privacy feature if gmail is going to reject those outright.

[tpoacher]

Nice.

I wonder; if you used this with a "one-payment-only" disposable card, to buy stuff without being harassed by subsequent "newsletters" ... is there a way this could backfire spectacularly by virtue of it being a public address?

I'm assuming the answer is probably yes, but I can't think of an obvious reason why.

EDIT: Hm, on second thought, I guess at a minimum you'd have to give a valid address to buy stuff. Unless it's one of those "give us your email to register" at a physical point of sale. Or unless you have things delivered to a local shop you trust or something. dunno.

[eshack94]

Really neat service, but how are you ensuring this won't get abused by spammers and fraudsters?

[itake]

Websites like this always seem to shutdown. Now I can’t access any accounts I created with them (since I can’t password recovery or change the email).

[KomoD]

> Now I can’t access any accounts I created with them (since I can’t password recovery or change the email)

Yeah... disposable

[burnished]

I believe this one is for temporary and PUBLIC emails, probably not like anything you have used before if account recovery is a concern.

[macintux]

I’ve been a happy customer of https://33mail.com/ for years. It’s a different style of offering with a similar purpose and apparently a sustainable business model.

[FpUser]

>"All inboxes are public."

What does that mean exactly? Hopefully not that everybody else can look at my "throwaway" inbox.

[racingmars]

>>"All inboxes are public."

>What does that mean exactly? Hopefully not that everybody else can look at my "throwaway" inbox.

It means exactly that. This is in the spirit of the old free version of Mailinator. Use a randomly generated string as the local part of the address to prevent others from guessing and looking that that inbox.

[quickthrower2]

Your email address is the secret, so yeah anyone who sends you email can see your inbox.

[jdthedisciple]

Did not receive my test email for some reason

[KomoD]

Tried it too, didn't receive anything either.

[browningstreet]

I got one of those duck.com addresses but I have no idea what it is or how to re-access it.

[abhinavg]

I'm a happy duck.com address user. I can answer these questions:

What it is: It gives you private throwaway email addresses. Instead of signing up for a website with <real>@gmail.com, use <fixed>@duck.com. It will forward the email to <real>@gmail.com after removing any trackers from it. It also lets you generate <random>@duck.com addresses on demand. If you sign up for something with <random>@duck.com, and they start spamming you, you can turn the email address off without doing anything to <real>@gmail.com or <fixed>@duck.com.

How to re-access it: Information about your duck.com address is stored in that browser. If you use the Browser extension, that remembers it. You simply need to log into that email address from your current browser. To do this, visit https://duckduckgo.com/email/, click on "I already have a Duck address", and enter your original <fixed>@duck.com address. It will email you a one-time password to <real>@gmail.com, and you'll be back in again.

[mteam88]

I would love something like this that forwards to a gmail address

[johnklos]

That can't work because Google does content-based filtering. They blame the forwarder for any spam or anything forwarded that's spam-like, and there's no way to designate a source as a legitimate (that is, don't blame it) forwarder.

[freedomben]

I do this using forwardemail.net. If a particular address gets sold and is being spammed, it's trivial to shut it down so it won't forward anymore.

[INTPenis]

Receiving is easy, sending is hard. That's why disposable services let you read the mail in their GUI instead of forwarding them.

[xigoi]

https://anonaddy.com/

[rvz]

Just like the other disposable email providers, this one will eventually get blocked pretty quickly.

Instead, use a forwarding email from Gmail, Hey.com, Outlook or ProtonMail.

[yawpitch]

Why, off hand, would anyone block an email _receiver_… from a quick glance at the server code, this project is essentially an SMTP dead end; any mail sent to it is temporarily stored in the database, then periodically flushed. With no sending or forwarding of mail to other servers, and assuming it’s properly acknowledging receipt, why would anyone else block it?

[kornhole]

Or get a cheap domain and setup a catchall email forwarding to a private box. If you want an anonymous domain, checkout https://kycnot.me/services#VPS.

[CodesInChaos]

Most of those require a phone number to sign up. Though I managed to sign up to protonmail by giving it a disposable email.

[KomoD]

I use temp-mail.org, I rarely have issues with blocking because they rotate domains

[remram]

Not open source, so not much of an alternative.

[KomoD]

Note: that is owned by him.