I love the mailinator service. Need a disposable e-mail address? Just pick one, like, say, gotcha@mailintor.com and it's yours. In fact, you can pick any @mailinator.com address you want to use.
The catch, of course, is that the e-mail address has zero privacy to it. You, and anyone else who chooses that name share the inbox. For certain types of e-mail this limitation is just fine. The classic use case is for registering for a website. I also use it quite a bit for testing software, where I might need a whole bunch of unique e-mails (ben.test.1@mailinator.com, ben.test.2@mailinator.com and so on).
This was all well and good until I tried using a bunch of @mailinator.com addresses with the AWeber mail service. I was creating a custom form, and for the life of me, I couldn't get AWeber to accept my submissions.
And then it hit me: they've probably black listed @mailinator.com addresses.
With that hunch in mind, I visited mailinator.com and checked out the section to the right labeled Alternate Domains. I hit the refresh button a few times and got the following options:
thisisnotmyrealemail.com safetymail.info mailinator2.com bobmail.info
As you may have guessed, any of the above domains will work as a substitute for @mailinator.com.
I fed AWeber ben.test.1@bobmail.info and sure enough, it was glad to accept it.
I can then check that inbox anytime I want by visiting: http://ben.test.1.mailinator.com.
So, yeah, nice try AWeber. But, for testing, Mailinator will still work for your service.
Nice post. I like mailinator too. I originally read about it in a Joel Spolsky post.
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