Where would we be if we didn't have free, throw-away email accounts available, like the accounts from HotMail and Yahoo?
Here's one thought: Without throw-away email accounts, people would be much angrier at email marketers, including the e-tailers who think they are legitimate. As it is, anyone who is not a novice at email knows to get a throw-away account when they need to communicate via email, but don't want to compromise their real email account to email marketers.
In a way, this is a really disfunctional relationship. There are so many people or companies out there that will abuse email, that email users are driven to sign up for throw-away accounts. The companies that offer the throw-away accounts know that these are throw-away accounts, which are likely to receive a much higher percentage of spam. But they offer them for free, probably because they think they can push advertising on their accounts' subscribers, or maybe because they want to be able upsell their subscribers to a non-free account.
Can this situation continue? Can Yahoo, Hotmail, and other companies continue to offer free, throw-away accounts that get a disproportionately large amount of spam? Does the current situation change if the spam problem gets worse? What happens if we get to the point where free, throw-away accounts are no longer available?
Posted by Doug Sauder at February 15, 2003 11:34 AM