Throwaway Email And Rid Yourself Of Spam

ThrowawayEmailAndRidYourselfOfSpam is no crazy response to MailSpam?. Lots of ways moved from SpamDefenseRoadmap.

Here we talk about "throwaway email addresses" ("disposable email addresses") and similar techniques.

There seem to be 2 major types of throwaway email addresses:

forwarding services: You sign up ahead of time and tell that service your "real" email address.
web services (is there a better name?): the service holds all email that it receives for a day or so, and when you're expecting email you check the web site.

Some (but not) all services of both types allow you to "make up" new email addresses, even when you are far from any computer.

Forwarding services (you must give them your real email address ahead of time)

Sneakemail http://www.sneakemail.com/. You have to log in to the website to create new email addresses.
- I personally use http://www.sneakemail.com/. Not only does it provide complete anonymity, but I can hand out one email address per company without it being obvious what my "real" email address is. -- TaralDragon
- I'm another satisfied "customer" of sneakemail. (I occasionally use the free service.) -- TimChambers
- I am, also. For registered users, the "key" feature is a handy way to still be able to hand someone a unique, single-purpose email address. -- DanMuller
E4ward.com [http://www.e4ward.com/] allows you use your own domain name.
SpamMotel is similar.
SpamGourmet http://SpamGourmet.com/ is similar. Once you've signed up, you can make new email addresses even when you are far from a computer. I have just been to spam gourmet it is really rather clever and worth a look.
Jetable.org [http://www.jetable.org/] by the APINC; no registration needed, several forwarding duration. There's even a Mozilla add-on.

web services

MailEater? [http://www.MailEater.com/] - I highly recommend this one. Its free, fast and most importantly no registration needed!
with DodgeIt? [http://www.dodgeit.com/] you can randomly invent mail addresses and then visit the web site over there to read what has been send to it - no need to forward even one mail to your real mail account.
Mailinator, http://www.mailinator.com

A very WardIsh? idea, for one-off email addresses. Just send mail to anything@mailinator.com and it will be there for you to collect for six or so hours. No setup, no login. No security, but you don't need it for the type of emails you send to it. You can make new email addresses even when you are far from a computer.

2Prong, [http://2prong.com] like Mailinator, but it copies your address to the clipboard automatically, so you just need to past it. And then check for mail automatically.
ipoo.org [http://ipoo.org/mail/] and TempInbox?.com http://tempinbox.com/ are similar to Mailinator. No ads, no registration. You can check your spam box with its RSS feed. Faster than DodgeIt?.
temporaryinbox [http://temporaryinbox.com/] similar to Mailinator -- send mail to anything @temporaryinbox.com . Anyone who knows the account name can check for messages. All mail is deleted after 6 hours. Unlike Mailinator, you (or anyone who guesses the account name) can manually delete messages immediately, rather than waiting until it is automatically deleted.

forwarding service *or* web service (depending on how you configure it)

ShortMail?.net [http://shortmail.net/] allows you to create forward addresses and anonymous disposable email. It also includes RSS feeds and allows you to save and delete emails.
SpamDay?.com [http://spamday.com/] allows you to create forward addresses and webmail addresses, valid for 24 hours. Support for RSS feed!
BigFoot?, http://www.bigfoot.com/

Use the bigfoot mail address, and they will send the mail to your real address. Additionally, they can route mail to multiple email addresses, and filter mail. No charge. Make sure you have cookies turned off. I lost count of the cookies from ad.doubleclick.net I rejected before finally turning cookies all the way off. How rude! -- RichardBash

I just have ad.doubleclick.net and doubleclick.net routed to 127.0.0.1 in my /etc/hosts file. For other sites that use doubleclick.net's "services," it seems to help. -- SamuelFalvo?

Change yourself and your habits

Assuming that it isn't easy to defend your email address, you can change how you use it:

Subscribe to an RssFeed? rather than a mailing list. (If the publisher doesn't have one, encourage them to provide one.)
Use a CaptchaTest to prevent people from sending spam through your website. (Yahoo use this to keep bots from registering thousands of email addresses. You can also use this to avoid getting blog comment spam.)

I have a simple policy: 2 email addresses. One for real people and entities that I'm already prepared to trust with my credit card. (It's very difficult to get on that list.) Another email address, beginning with the word "junk" for everything else that I can't abandon that requires an email address. This second email address is read by a script that deletes everything that doesn't come from a few designated senders.

no email address at all

I first parsed the title as "Throw Away Email -- Rid Yourself of Spam", which seems to advocate not having any email address at all. Like DonKnuth, who after 15 years of email, no longer has an email address. -- DavidCary

Veritas Software and other companies that have mandated "Email-Free Fridays". Supposedly, any email sent to someone at those companies on a Friday immediately bounces with a message about "Email Free Friday" and usually the phone number of that person. Is this true? AnswerMe.

Well David, DonKnuth does have a mail address. I have sent mail to him and received replies too.

Also, dodgeit.com has RSS feeds. It's an excellent service and I have been using it for quite some time now.

But just today, I stumbled upon a site that won't accept a dodgeit.com or mailinator.com address! Check www.usenext.com. Guess spammers are taking note of these services.

-- SiddharthaReddy?

According to http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html, Don Knuth did have an email address for 15 years, until 1990. Then he stopped. Are you saying you emailed Knuth *before* he stopped, or are you saying that website is a pack of lies? :-) -- DavidCary

No, since "sent mail" isn't the same as "sent email".

Carrying on in ThreadMode... Being old enough to know how to fill a fountain pen, I marvel at how technology has managed to elegantly, seamlessly complicate our lives.

CategorySpam