Use Disposable Email Accounts to Reduce Spam

Anonymity, privacy, need to know, it seems that despite laws to protect us like the HIPA form we fill out at the doctors office, every place we interact with wants information that truly isn’t necessary. Example: I recently tried to download a trial version of a particular software. In order to receive the download, they wanted to know my full name, valid e-mail address, the level of my education, sex, marital status and a few other things that just aren’t any of their business.

Why do they want this information? It would appear that the only use it could have would be to send spam to my inbox and sell the e-mails and information lists to other spammers. Granted, targeted advertising based on the information I provide, but junk mail none the less. Some of the answers can be fun. Name, I usually just pull one from what ever news article I happened to be reading or if the CEO of the company is listed on the website I’ll use theirs. Education: depending on whether it is a pull down with limited choices or a field that must be filled in, I have been kindergarten drop out to Doctor of Advanced Matriculation. For the rest of the questions I just flip a coin. But the one question that poses more of a problem is the valid e-mail.  Most of these companies send a test e-mail to the account provided and if it is bounced back as a bad or non-existent account they will ask for a VALID e-mail address.

For many years now I have had an e-mail account with one of the free e-mail providers that I would provide in these situations and all the spam would go there. I rarely check this e-mail address and eventually the provider would send an e-mail to me saying that the inbox was full and if I didn’t log in at least once in a while they would deactivate the account. However there is another approach available that eliminates the maintenance of a junk mail account. These are called Disposable E-mail Accounts. (DEA)

Disposable E-mail Accounts are very easy to use. Two examples of DEAs can be found at mailinator.com or disposeamail.com. These sites set up a temporary e-mail address that requires no password or account information to use. They have no address book, no folders, nothing but an inbox. They also don’t require that we create an e-mail account with them first. For example: Imagine that we respond to an online survey by our favorite politician.  At the end of the survey they want to know our e-mail address which will ensure continuing request for money, I mean more critical surveys. In the e-mail field we can put randite@mailinator.com and a test to that address will reveal it to be a real e-mail address. If we really want to see anything sent to the e-mail address, just go to mailinator.com and type in randite@mailinator.com and click check mail.  This is a great way to fill in web-forms and at the same time prevent tons of spam from appearing in our real inboxes.

Better yet, there are absolutely NO signups or registrations! These accounts are completely anonymous.  Any email received by DEA servers will automatically be directed to the correct inbox. The is no requirement to setup an inbox before you can receive mail

It’s like having our own personal cloaking device.