Small tip for throwaway email addresses and forwarding

TMSG

Years ago I often used a service called yopmail.com to create throwaway email addresses. Unfortunately, many websites have long since put this (and many other) domains into blacklists and so won't accept such email addresses.

However, just the other day I discovered that yopmail.com has a few new features. One is that they now support a so-called "new daily domain". This changes every day (so it's not in the usual blacklists) but it remains valid. See the attached image where the daily domain is "@pokemons1.fr.nf". I've tested this with a few sites and all have accepted email addresses based on that domain.



A second worthwhile new feature is that it's now possible to forward email received in a yopmail inbox to another account (ie one of your "real" accounts). To do this, you have to open the email you want to forward, click on "Forward" in the top right and give the recipient's email address, say your Gmail account. To minimise abuse Yopmail will first send a confirmation message with a link to the recipient's inbox which the recipient has to click. But afterwards you can forward as many messages as you want to this address (I also use a duck.com alias for this so Yopmail does not have my "real" email address.)

Hope this helps someone.

forgotmyname

The problem is the daily lists show up as a sudden influx from those domains and they get blocked before the day is out.

Anything fr.nf is hotlisted already.

TMSG

Is it indeed? I tried yesterday afternoon with a few sites before I posted, and also this morning, had no trouble at all.

So any websites that already block those daily domains or TLDs must have pretty aggressive sysadmins and I'd be interested which ones you've run into, to add them to my arsenal of test sites.

Anyway, if some sites block the daily new domains, others clearly don't so this may still be worth a try.

forgotmyname

Yes I am aggressive in blocking scammers and spammers on my forums.  Anything fr.nf is flagged automatically for manual verification
because we don't get many. But if there was an influx of fresh accounts then it would go on the autoban list.

Currently it's on the disposable emails are not allowed list giving members the option to use a proper email address which so far
nobody has done.  They may have rejoined with a proper email or just gone elsewhere, but I have have other tools to see if they
return.

DullGreyGuy

How are you dealing with iCloud.com now that apple devices have autogenerated email addresses as built in functionality to all their devices which use an iCloud.com email address?

TMSG

forgotmyname said:

Yes I am aggressive in blocking scammers and spammers on my forums.  Anything fr.nf is flagged automatically for manual verification
because we don't get many. But if there was an influx of fresh accounts then it would go on the autoban list.

Currently it's on the disposable emails are not allowed list giving members the option to use a proper email address which so far
nobody has done.  They may have rejoined with a proper email or just gone elsewhere, but I have have other tools to see if they
return.

So, you're not talking about websites in general (as I did) but about one or more site(s) under your responsibility? You should have mentioned that in your first post above.

I have yet to find a site (of those that interest me) which couldn't be, one way or another, made to accept a throwaway mail addy. And contrary to your sweeping "scammers and spammers" statement many people have very good reasons to use throwaway addresses.

If all else fails, duckduckgo offers a service that hides your real email address behind their @duck.com domain. This also has the added advantage that they filter out most, perhaps all, tracking elements in the mail body before it reaches your inbox.

Of course, you must make sure that you understand what that relaying involves.

forgotmyname

Not just me though, I moderate several other forums where I only have the option of moving posts to the correct sections
and I speak to the owners and admins on other websites/forums and they mostly use the same tools and block lists.

Dispoable emails for the stuff I use would be pointless because you would not get the emails which is a big part

of the function of the website/forums.



I do have one puzzle that I am stumped on, a person joins and advertises a UK company which is not allowed but the spammer
is in another country and barely speaks english and not linked to the companies.  They get banned too quickly for them to
do anything but it puzzles me on their reasoning.  They hit several forums and post a copy/paste question from the site so they
obviously visit and go back a few years to find a question to ask (copy/paste).

TMSG

forgotmyname said:

Dispoable emails for the stuff I use would be pointless because you would not get the emails which is a big part

of the function of the website/forums.

Pointless? Not at all!

Disposable doesn't mean that you can't follow and act on the stream of emails as they arrive in "your" throwaway mailbox, it just means that a) everyone who knows your disposable address can also view the messages (so don't use one for personal stuff) and b) that you don't have to give your personal mail addy to a website.

As I wrote in my OP, yopmail.com now has a forwarding feature which I've already used a couple of times.

But each to their own.

Newcad

forgotmyname said:

I do have one puzzle that I am stumped on, a person joins and advertises a UK company which is not allowed but the spammer

is in another country and barely speaks english and not linked to the companies.  They get banned too quickly for them to
do anything but it puzzles me on their reasoning.  They hit several forums and post a copy/paste question from the site so they
obviously visit and go back a few years to find a question to ask (copy/paste).

It does look strange at first, but it does make sense once you know what is going on.

They get paid peanuts per-post made, (even when the post gets deleted quickly), using lists of weblinks that they are sent.

(Not sure just how it's done but something like 'You'll be emailed 10 links each day, post each one in 100 different fora and we'll pay you xxx for every 100 done').

They also get tips on how to try and beat automatic moderation, the copy/paste of an old post already on the site, or even from another site, is just one of those tactics, there are various other such tactics which as a moderator you learn to spot instantly.
(It's why real people are used not spambots, people are better at avoiding the automatic filters, in many countries people are cheap to employ for that kind of work).

The spammer is not bothered at all about being quickly banned and the posts deleted, they still get paid and have moved on to another forum, they also change usernames constantly so may be back soon with a different name. (Good moderator also learn to see patterns in those names).

The company paying them isn't bothered either, - they are not aiming their spam at people reading it, they are aimng it at the search engine web crawlers and bots which a constantly scouring the web for now content.

The lists of links that they are given come from dodgy SEO companies, you know the ones "We will increase your company website ranking". The dodgy ones don't actually do that they just spam fora with your company link.
It doesn't increase your online ranking at all (the search engines recognise them and filter them out of rankings), but they can point a gullible company to how many more links to it's website there now are - "Just search google with your company name and see how many more hits it now gets. Give us some more money and we can get you even more".

Genuine SEO companies don't indulge in such useless tactics.

Currently most of these forum spammers are in India and Pakistan, their cultures regard it as legitimate business advertising (no different from junk mail or leaflets through your door) so they don't even use VPN to mask where they are.

All you can do is take the spam down quickly so that it doesn't annoy your genuine members and drive them away.

forgotmyname

Thanks Newcad, interesting information.

Yes mostly India and Pakistan with a few from Nigeria, Thailand and even Korea.  I can see the thought process even though it mostly
fails with us because we are hot on banning them quickly.

But it got really puzzling when a tiny shop on the south coast of the UK that did not even have a website posted. So possibly a company
trying to get them onto the internet and offering them a deal for a website and advertising.