Difference between revisions 609761663 and 611048152 on enwiki

< previous diff
next diff >
Mailinator
{{refimprove|date=December 2011}}
'''Mailinator''' is a free [[disposable email address]] service created in 2003 by [[Paul Tyma]]. The idea is to let a user invent a new [[email address]] on-the-fly, whenever needed, for instance, while filling in a form on a [[Web site]].

(contracted; show full)

Emails may be viewed in unmodified "text view" mode. Mailboxes may also be accessed directly via the [[Uniform resource locator|URL]], as in http://MailboxName.mailinator.com.

==Potential problems==

As of 2014, HTML messages are displayed automatically, and there's no way to disable that. That means that emails containing [[web bugs]] allow marketers to track who has read the message, when and from what computer. That is a contradiction with the privacy that Mailinator pretends to provide.
Messages are deleted in an irregular way. Mailbox capacity limit is 20 messages, so if new messages arrive (spam messages are not filtered), previous messages are deleted. Besides, Mailinator doesn't specify how long messages stay. FAQ only says: "After several hours, all email is auto-deleted".⏎
⏎
A few sites might block the sending of email to the Mailinator domain, or services similar to it, but Mailinator provides alternate domains to work around this ban in most cases. In addition, a domain owner can set up the [[MX record]]s to point to the Mailinator server, in effect adding an unlimited number of domains for which Mailinator will receive messages. This is expressly allowed by Mailinator.<ref name=OPM />

A significant difference of Mailinator compared to regular [[message transfer agent|email service]]s is that received messages are kept for only a few hours. As new messages arrive, the older messages are deleted to make room for them, resulting in messages being available for a variable amount of time.

In addition, messages may be dropped silently for a number of reasons, making it unwise to use Mailinator for emails that cannot be re-sent to another address.

Each mailbox also has a ten-message limit, which means that choosing a unique address is important. Presumably, this is to prevent a flood of mail to a single address, forcing the Mailinator system to delete messages from other mailboxes earlier than usual.

According to the Mailinator Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), plain text messages are best, as [[HTML]] is filtered. Images, attachments and styles are simply stripped away.  However, when a message is displayed, a "text view" can be selected, displaying the message source code.  The source code can be copied to a local text file with the .eml extension and opened for viewing with a mail client program that is capable of doing so, displaying formatted HTML mail just as it was sent.<ref>The Mailinator site was redesigned in mid-2013, and as of mid-2014 the [http://www.mailinator.com/faq.html FAQ] no longer mentions this aspect of usage.</ref>⏎
⏎
== See also ==
*[[Disposable email address]]
*[[Spamgourmet]]
*[[TrashMail]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.mailinator.com Mailinator.com]&nbsp;— Mailinator homepage
*[http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2006/12/architecture-of-mailinator.html Paul Tyma's blog]&nbsp;— Description of the Mailinator architecture by its founder, Paul Tyma
*[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9405E6DD173EF935A25753C1A9659C8B63 New York Times Technology]&nbsp;— Review of Mailinator

[[Category:Webmail]]
[[Category:Anti-spam]]