Hotmail Launches Accounts You Can Throw Away 286
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Today, Hotmail is getting a new feature aimed at 'e-mail enthusiasts,' which lets anyone create multiple e-mail accounts that can be read, replied to, and managed from their everyday e-mail inbox. These additional e-mail addresses can be had in the same manner as signing up for new accounts, but they require no extra log-ins or upkeep. ... The idea is to give users a safe way to provide third parties with an e-mail address, without giving up the address they've provided to family and friends, which, if compromised, can end the usefulness of that particular account. Each user will be able to create up to five aliases, any of which can be deleted and replaced with another at any time. Over time, Microsoft will increase that limit to 15 aliases per account, making it so that the true heavy users won't need to juggle between two or more Hotmail accounts."
Hrmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cool idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it still exposes your primary address. Whereas it seems that the reasoning behind this Hotmail feature is primarily privacy.
Re:Cool idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't say it was perfect, just that GMail had a version of throwaway email for a while now!
If Hotmail one-ups Google then that's all the better for the users because that's how services get better, through competition.