Most of the Lemmy instances seem to require an email to sign up. That’s fine, except most of the places you would go to sign up for email want you to… already have an email. And often a phone number. And almost always a first name, last name, and birthday.

I promise not to do bad stuff, but I don’t want that sort of information able to be publicly associated with my accounts where I write stuff, when everyone inevitably loses their databases to hackers. Pseudonymity is good, actually; on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog, etc.

Is anyone doing normal webmail registration anymore? Set username and password, receive email for free? I don’t even need to send anything to sign up for accounts elsewhere.

  • sexy_peach@feddit.de
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    2 years ago

    Not a single Lemmy server requires mail afaik. It’s always optional I think!

    Anyways, I always use one of the 10minutemail websites for stuff like this.

      • admin@aiparadise.moe
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        2 years ago

        Happy to see your interest in aiparadise.moe! Personally I use proton mail for all my email account (https://proton.me). Can have your first and last name as your username or whatever you want, they also don’t require having an email already (only if you want password recovery) hope that helps!

        • planish@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          2 years ago

          I might give them a try. I already tried to do @planish@aiparadise.moe with planish@sh.itjust.works as an “email”, and that did not work even a little bit. So now I guess I need a new name over there unless you want to use your admin powers to clean up my bad life choices.

          • admin@aiparadise.moe
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            2 years ago

            Should be able to reapply with your desired username with a proper email, nothing should be reserved on our end for it anymore. Let me know if it gives you any trouble though!

      • sexy_peach@feddit.de
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        2 years ago

        Oh you’re right. Also my suggestion with a 10minute mail wouldn’t work either since it would probably take longer to approve. There are other burner email services though where you can have an email for a longer time.

        I think the admin will understand if you explain the reason for the email address.

        • planish@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          2 years ago

          That’s a good point. My turbo-nerd values beep angrily when I find something I want can only be gotten by asking a real human nicely, and being likable enough to be accepted, and not, say, via a well-documented freely available API call. But sometimes that’s life.