Anurag Jain's Blog on Bangalore Events, Travel, IIM Bangalore, IIM, IIMB, Management

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Posted 7:44 PM by Anurag

Nirvana under /. tree

That was some big response from /.ers to my /. submission (where do dummy email addresses go) about someone AT somewhere.com post on my blog (right below this one).

Thank you for all your comments. Now, only if you all /.ers had given me your real email IDs, I could've replied to you individually :) Jokes apart, all the comments on /. and on my blog were really useful. I learnt a lot of new things about dummy email addresses. The best part though was that we got to hear from somewhere.com owner Nazgul. All I can say to you Nazgul is: Touche. And Sorry, man, for all the trouble caused unknowingly. From now on, I am using aj@example.com in online forums. Hope others will use example.com too.

Just to recap, here are some key and/or interesting learnings from the discussion (Mostly taken directly from reader comments):
* Dummy email addresses cause lot of problems to actual domain owners.
* As per RFC 2606, example.com (also example.net.net/example.org) is reserved for testing purposes. So, its best to use anything@example.com/net/org as a dummy email ID.
* Even if you think you use a dummy id because the domain doesn't exist right now, think again, it might be registered later.
* Use a one-time disposable address (such as from tanya.com/ or Mailinator) in those situations where you need to receive an initial reply, but none after that. Some other publicly available email IDs/services are:
- Jablome.com is a publicly accessible inbox for heywood@jablome.com.
- Get yourself a junk Hotmail account or something
- Use a domain less than 3 chars - can't exist, according to standards, so you won't be abusing anyone.
* Even though legality of following points made by nurb432 is dubious, they should make you think twice before using dummy email IDs:
- you are falsifying your identity with intent to deceive.
- you are assuming the identity of someone else, again with intent.
- improperly using others resources, or causing harm to others resources..

In the end, as Douglas Adams would say, So long, and thanks for all the dummy AT dummy dot com addresses. I am going the example.com way!

0 comments

Comments: Post a Comment