July 10, 2026
Blocked by his own bad idea
My burner email blocklist blocked me
He built the email blacklist—then it locked him out and the internet howled
TLDR: A developer who once helped block throwaway email addresses got rejected by that same kind of system and now says websites should stop punishing privacy-minded users. Commenters turned it into a full-blown irony fest, with jokes, blame, and a real debate over whether aliases are actually any different in practice.
This story has everything: irony, regret, and a comment section absolutely feasting. The writer admitted he once helped popularize tools that blocked so-called “burner” email addresses, only to get rejected years later when he tried to sign up for a public service using a privacy-friendly email alias from Proton Mail. His new message is simple: stop treating privacy tools like scammer tools. In plain English, he says there’s a big difference between a shady one-click throwaway inbox and a personal forwarding address people use to avoid spam, leaks, and creepy tracking.
But the crowd was less interested in a calm policy rethink and more interested in the delicious karmic twist. One commenter basically shouted the internet’s favorite meme—the leopards ate my face—while another cackled, “His own petard?!” Others piled on with a harsher take: for sign-up forms, an alias and a burner are functionally the same if your goal is to stop fake accounts, so maybe the author’s distinction is too neat. That kicked off the real mini-drama: is this a thoughtful privacy correction, or a guy discovering his own rule was bad only after it hit him personally?
Then came the practical hot takes. One person said the smarter move is limiting how many accounts come from one domain each day instead of blanket bans. Another pointed out Apple’s paid privacy emails can hide inside regular iCloud addresses, making them nearly impossible to block anyway. Translation: the bad guys adapt, regular people get punished, and the comments are having a field day about it.
Key Points
- •Benjamin Piouffle says he was blocked from signing up to ECMWF's open-data service when using a Proton Mail alias flagged as potential spam.
- •The author published Burnex in 2018, an Elixir package that checked email addresses against burner-domain lists based on wesbos/burner-email-providers.
- •The article argues that public disposable inboxes and personal email aliases are different categories and should not be treated the same in signup policies.
- •Firefox Relay and Apple Hide My Email are cited as mainstream alias services that help users reduce tracking, spam, and address leakage exposure.
- •The article says domain blocklists are easy for determined abusers to bypass through Gmail plus-addressing, services like Emailnator, or cheap custom domains.