Which email you can sign up with

Penlab has no passwords: we enter an email, get a message with a code and sign in. Until recently the address could be any. Now a new account can be created with an address at one of the well-known email services.

Where the problem came from

Signing in by code is convenient for people, and just as convenient for a script. Disposable email services hand out a new mailbox in a second, and a separate account can be created for each of them. A hundred mailboxes — a hundred accounts.

Empty accounts by themselves bother nobody. What bothers is what is done with them next: they give likes. A hundred likes lift a pen to the top of the showcase, and the Popular sorting starts to show something other than what people liked.

We closed part of the problem with Editor's Picks — the home page no longer depends on likes. The showcase does, so a second measure was needed.

What changed

At sign-up we look at the domain of the address — the part after @. Addresses of these services are accepted now:

• Yandex — yandex.ru, ya.ru, yandex.com, yandex.by, yandex.kz;
• Mail.ru and VK — mail.ru, bk.ru, list.ru, inbox.ru, internet.ru, vk.com;
• Rambler — rambler.ru, lenta.ru, autorambler.ru, myrambler.ru, ro.ru;
• Google — gmail.com, googlemail.com;
• Microsoft — outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com, msn.com;
• Apple — icloud.com, me.com, mac.com;
• Yahoo — yahoo.com;
• Proton — proton.me, protonmail.com, pm.me.

If the domain is not on the list, a message under the field says that email on this domain is not accepted. No code is sent in that case.

Whom it concerns

Only a new address. There are two cases:

1. sign-up — when there is no account with this email yet;
2. changing the email in the profile.

Those who already have an account do not need to do anything: signing in works as before, whatever email the account uses.

This decision has a price

An allow-list cuts off more than disposable email. An address on the domain of a company, a university or your own domain will not pass — although it is ordinary permanent email. The match is exact: mail.ru on the list does not mean that corp.mail.ru will pass.

We chose this option deliberately. There are thousands of disposable services, and new ones appear every day — a block-list is always behind. A list of allowed services is short, and it is noticeably harder to get around. For an open alpha this trade-off seems reasonable to us; the rules may change over time.

If your email is not on the list

The simplest way is to sign up with an address at one of the services above and then, if you wish, change the email in your profile.

If you use an ordinary email service that is missing from the list, write to us at penlab.info@yandex.com and name the domain. We will look at it and most likely add it.