alt Hacker News> verified through a disposable email address
To the extent it works that's a loophole. I can't speak to proton specifically but the majority of services don't want to permit disposable email because the entire point is to cut down on spam and abuse.
I can appreciate having the option of providing a phone number or email or whatever but I think the state of the ecosystem is telling. The option for anonymous email with PoW per outgoing email isn't provided despite largely addressing the commonly cited rationale for requiring some sort of verification. And we're still stuck bashing PGP, shilling for competing E2E message solutions while it's plain as day that the vast majority of commerce isn't going to move off of email any time soon. Meanwhile TLS can figure out how to distribute public keys via DNS as part of implementing ECH in all major browsers over a period of less than a decade.
While I don't use disposable emails I've been converting all my accounts to unique emails with either Firefox Relay[0] or using my personal website[1]. Bitwarden has made this easy as they let you import your Relay's API key and so every new site gets unique usernames and passwords[2]. It certainly is making it easier to block spam, and you get to know who is leaking your emails[3], and I've burned emails because of it. Frankly at this point the biggest problem is having a 20 year old gmail account. But the plus side of this type of system is that you can move your endpoint, so where Relay/CF directs the emails too, making you less reliant on your email provider[4].
There's pros and cons. On the plus side, unique identities for every site and by getting a catchall domain you can even generate valid addresses via pen and paper. Probably the biggest benefit is just searching emails. On the cons, document sharing can be a bigger pain than it already is (how is this still a pain all these years later?). Also, people get very confused when you tell them your email address is [email protected] (I don't actually have that domain, don't send emails there).
It's helpful but I think represents a fundamental flaw in our ecosystem.
I can't believe we haven't normalized this in the nerdy spaces, at least not to the degree of things like Signal. It is a thing that can be entirely automated and both Thunderbird and NeoMutt are able to handle this for you and make it effectively seamless. The average person does want this stuff, but they don't want to think about it. The problem is that they think their stuff is already private, or they say it can be spied on but that they're not worth spying on so they think it is effectively the same thing.[0] https://relay.firefox.com/
[1] Cloudflare will do email forwarding for you as will plenty of others: https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/products/email...
[2] What doesn't help is how prolific OAUTH is becoming.
[3] Sorry, adding +something on your gmail won't work these days.
[4] I'm actually looking. People say TutaMail but sorry, I need something I can use with either Thunderbird or NeoMutt... This is non-negotiable. Everyone has multiple email addresses these days and I'm not checking 30 different sites. The problem is already one of poor organization.