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Ask HN: Is there a safe /dev/null for e-mail addresses?

1 points by WCityMike ↗ HN
I hope this isn't a question out of place here. If so, my apologies in advance.

Is there an equivalent of /dev/null for e-mail addresses -- an address where, when you send it there, you can be assured that it goes into nothingness?

An additional (and perhaps essential) criteria would be it not being an address where a third party could redirect the "/dev/null"-iness of it into a normal, saving e-mail address.

This would not be on a mail server I would have any control or configuration over; in fact, I'd be using the address from Gmail.

I did recently purchase a domain name, so perhaps could do something along those lines, but I'm afraid I must admit to slight n00bishness when it comes to what one can do with mail redirection and URL redirection.

If it doesn't or can't exist, fair enough -- but thought I would inquire and I figured if it did exist, it'd be known by someone on here.

Thanks!

4 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 19.5 ms ] thread
patio11
anything@example.{com,org,net} will probably work for your purpose, if you just want an email where you can send stuff to without annoying a real person.

You should not assume that something sent to one of them would be non-recoverable. (That is a poor assumption for email in general, due to how SMTP works. Basically, everybody "between" sender and recipient gets to see everything, and "between" can be a very, very scary place. You get no guarantees as to the policies of the people who compromise "between.")

sixtofour
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606 provides a number of test/example TLDs and second level domain names.

I just sent email from gmail to devnull@example.com, without an immediate bounce.

I don't know if this is considered rude or benign, nor whether it satisfies your need. I also don't know what happens to anything sent there: storage, logs, etc.

sixtofour
Followup: I received the following error on 7/25.

    This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification
    
    THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY.
    
    YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE.
    
    Delivery to the following recipient has been delayed:
    
         devnull@example.com
    
    Message will be retried for 2 more day(s)
    
    Technical details of temporary failure: 
    The recipient server did not accept our requests to connect. Learn more at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=7720 
    [example.com (1): Connection timed out]
WCityMike
Thank you -- I appreciate both your answers!