Email Resources for the security minded Seax

From time to time we want to receive email, but are afraid to give out our real email addresses. That's understandable, and until recently this meqant we went someplace and signed up for a free webmail address and used it till it became useless or not needed, and walked away from it, leaving them holding the bag with a huge unemptied mailbag of your mail. That's not very nice to do to a hard working and underpaid free email service. There's a better set of solutions now available.

-Spamhole temporary email addresses

Creates an ALIAS which forwards to your real address for a limited preset period of time, after which it vanishes and incoming mail goes into the bit bucket. MUST BE PRE-CREATED before you can use it. See next item for one that does NOT!

Mailinator - Get enough SPAM lately?

Have you ever gone to a website that asks for your email address? (haven't we all). You know that the moment you type it in, it is streaming across the net on its way to every spam database in the world. You simply can't be that careless with your personal email address.

What if there was a website that any and every email address you can think of already exists. And you use any one you like, anytime you like - just by thinking one up.

Welcome to Mailinator.. It's like super-instant, always-ready, any-email-you-want email. Right now. It's your personal disposable email account. Here is how it works: You are on the web, at a party, or talking to your favorite insurance salesman. Wherever you are, someone (or some webpage) asks for your email. You know if you give it, you're gambling with your privacy. On the other hand, you do want at least one message from that person. The answer is to give them a mailinator address. You don't need to sign-up. You just make it up on the spot. Pick schminky@mailinator.com or funwump123@mailinator.com . pick anything you want.

Later, come to this site and check that account. Its that easy. Mailinator accounts are created when mail arrives for them. No signup, no personal information, and when you're done . you can walk away . an instant solution to one way spammers get your address. It's an anti-spam solution for everyone. Your temporary email account will be automatically deleted for you after a few hours.

Let'um spam.

spamgourmet - free disposable email addresses, strong spam blocker, short learning curve

How spamgourmet works

If you give your email address to everyone, you are bound to receive spam emails, and you won't know where they came from. Wouldn't it be convenient to give a different email address to every business or web site, while getting all your email as before? Wouldn't it be easiest to assume the address will be given to spammers, and have it work as a spam blocker by shutting off automatically unless you decide otherwise?

That's exactly what spamgourmet offers! There is nothing to install on your computer, and once you're set up, it's likely you won't ever have to come back here. This is what makes spamgourmet one of the most convenient and effective anti-spam tools available.

Protect yourself from spam in three easy steps:

1. If you haven't done it yet, create a spamgourmet account. Enter your user name and the email address you want to be protected. You will be asked to identify the word in a picture and pick a password.

2. Spamgourmet will forward to this address all the emails sent to your spamgourmet disposable addresses -- that way you don't have to tell anyone else what it is -- this is why it's called the protected address. Of course, this protected address must exist. That's why you have to confirm it. You'll receive an email asking you to confirm.

3. After you have confirmed your protected address, you can give out self-destructing disposable email addresses whenever you want. The disposable addresses are like:

someword.x.user@spamgourmet.com

where someword is a word you have never used before, x is the number of email messages you want to receive at this address (up to 20), and user is your username.

For example, if your user name is "spamcowboy", and BigCorp wants you to give them your email address (on the web, on the phone, at a store - it doesn't matter), instead of giving them your protected address, give them this one:

frombigcorp.3.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com

This disposable email address will be created here the first time BigCorp uses it (you don't have to do anything to create it), and you'll receive at most 3 messages, forwarded to your protected address. The rest will be indelicately consumed.

My Trash Mail - Assorted anti trash mail services.

Temporary accounts, anynomous sending, and more, this place offers some VERY odd and unsusal services. Give it a look over, thiese folk are getting pretty creative.

dodgit.com - Free receive only. No setup, no fuss

VERY terse and to the point. From the FAQ:

How does it work?

Pick a throwaway address, say: deeznuts@dodgeit.com Give that address out whenever you need to. Check deeznuts from homepage of dodgeit.com. Subscribe to RSS feed to keep an eye on the mailbox. Get it?

That strikes me as simple and effective. Notice the PRIOR one lests you SEND messages. This one does not.

Pookmail - Disposable accounts with limited life on stored messages, so check it soon!

PookMail.com is a disposable email account system. Use PookMail.com to avoid giving your personal email address to suspicious websites. (Email is delted after 24 hours.)

SpamBob - Several services available

SpamBob provides free disposable email addresses for use whenever you don't want to provide your real email address (registration forms, newsletters, "special offers" etc.). SpamBob is 100% free, with no hidden gimmicks, no fine print, and no annoying ads. Three types of disposable email addresses are offered:

* @spambob.COM: Make up as many spambob.com addresses as you want on the fly, and then come to this web page when you want to check for messages. All messages are stripped of attachments and viruses. Anyone can read messages sent to spambob.com addresses, so don't use spambob.com addresses for private messages.

* @spambob.NET: Activate forwarding in advance for as many spambob.net addresses as you want, and messages will secretly be forwarded to your real email address. If you start receiving spam at a spambob.net address, simply deactivate forwarding for that address at any time. Only you will be able to read your messages.

* @spambob.ORG: Make up as many spambob.org addresses as you want on the fly, and all messages received will automatically and immediately be deleted by us. Messages cannot be checked and are not forwarded to you. Use spambob.org addresses in situations where you only have to provide a properly formatted email address.

Regardless of which type of disposable SpamBob address you use (.com, .net or .org), your real email address is always hidden from potential spammers. You don't have to install any software or reconfigure your email program to use SpamBob. You can keep your existing email address and Internet service provider.

TIP: If you want to completely bypass the free registration process required by nosy sites such as the New York Times, use BugMeNot together with a disposable email address from SpamBob! And if you want to remain generally anonymous while you surf the Net, use Proxify.

TrashMail.Net Temporary forwarding, preset lifespan, limited number of counted forwards.

Create a free disposable email address! It's really easy to use:
Create a new email address on trashmail.net. All mails to this address will be forwarded to your real email address for a number of times you can set up on the following form. When the limit is reached, the Trashmail.net email address will be automatically deleted. All following mails (like spam, newsletter, etc) will be rejected at Trashmail.net.