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Fake ISP

Anonymous Email Provider which pretends to be an ISP
 
(+2, -2)
  [vote for,
against]

As registration requests become more sophisticated, more tools become needed to combat online sites from getting access to email addresses. While plenty of sites will go so far as to not even require email addresses (with the warning that not providing it means no password recovery services are available), some go the other way and refuse to accept email addresses from free email providers, and checking services that provide such accounts publicly to prevent them from being useful.

So, the next step would be to produce a web site that pretends to be a DSL provider. Attempts to register phone lines would indicate that the service was not available in the requestor's area, attempts to login would normally fail. However, users with the correct username and password (spread by word of mouth) would be able to login in and produce email accounts.

I suspect this strategy would fail quickly if the site became too well known, but it would make a nice defense against registration services which, rather than making a list of which domains belong to free email providers, keep a list of which ones don't, and manually add new ones.

aguydude, Aug 28 2007

For DrCurry. http://vbulletin.th.../member.php?u=11962
[jutta, Aug 28 2007]


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Annotation:







       What problem are you trying to solve here? I can get email service through any number of methods, anywhere from my own personal domain down to one shot addresses for truly anonymous use.
Galbinus_Caeli, Aug 28 2007
  

       Yeah, what GC said.   

       Btw, are there really any galdudes out there?
DrCurry, Aug 28 2007
  

       Highly baked. Do a search on "throw away email addresses" and you'll find dozens.
gtoal, Aug 28 2007
  

       The subtle difference between these throw-away email addresses and the poster's idea becomes evident when address users sign up for services and present their email address to a human site owner.   

       Let's say you want to log into the halbfakery, and you give me your email address as baddie@junkemail.com. I (the halbfakery owner) go look at www.junkemail.com, and see "Aha! Free accounts!" I won't allow users with junkemail.com addresses to sign up - any spammer can get millions of those.   

       With the fake ISP site suggested by the poster, you give me baddie@quaintlocalisp.com. I look at www.quaintlocalisp.com, think "Wow, this user paid money for the accounts at this real ISP!" and let them in.   

       (For the record, I don't personally think this form of distinction is common enough, nor the deception powerful enough, to make this worthwhile.)
jutta, Aug 28 2007
  

       Jutta: Ha!
DrCurry, Aug 28 2007
  


 

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