Trying new things on the internet often requires you to provide a legitimate email address for registration verification, which can result in receiving increasing amounts of spam email over time. Here are 5 ways to navigate around receiving spam – with free disposable email addresses!
1. Mailinator: The 48 hour disposable email address
Mailinator has been around for a long time, and is easily the most recognizable name in spam-free registration. Here’s how it works: Mailinator creates a temporary email address which lasts for 48 hours, during which you can send any number of registration verification links (or any other type of email) to that address. This is especially useful for signing up to sites which require you to verify that you are indeed a real person, as it circumvents the problem of receiving spam or advertisements in your personal inbox when all you want to do is access the features of the site once.
The best part is that you don’t even have to sign up for Mailinator! Simply provide the yourname@mailinator.com address (as an example) to the œoffending site, and Mailinator automatically creates a temporary inbox when it receives the mail! It’s that easy!
2. MintEmail : The free disposable email which automatically refreshes itself
If you’re looking for the best free disposable email address provider, there’s actually very little to distinguish between them as they all basically perform the same thing. However, MintEmail does offer a wider range of functionality compared to most standard temporary email providers, for whenever you find them necessary.
To start off, MintEmail’s interface is the cleanest of the list, with a very simple introductory page that shows you if any new mails have arrived in your temporary email inbox, right from the front page. In addition, MintEmail takes advantage of newer web compatibility formats to periodically update your inbox, so you don’t have to keep refreshing it to discover if you have received any new mail, and pulls a Gmail trick in updating the title of the page so that you can check for new mail right from the title of the open tab while you’re doing something else.
3. DodgeIt: The disposable email service which comes with RSS
DodgeIt acts in the same way as the other free disposable email address suppliers, by providing a temporary account to hold unwanted or undesired emails. Where DodgeIt does excel in, however, is that it includes the special added functionality of providing RSS feeds of said mailbox. This can come in handy if you’re someone who relies on temporary email addresses a lot, and want to swiftly sift through the entire stack for something relatively more important.
DodgeIt also has the most basic interface, sporting just text and a few rows of advertisements, so if you’re on a network with patience-testing speeds, it may just be your temporary email account of choice. They also offer the option of setting passwords to your temporary email accounts in their premium offering, which costs $10, so if you like the security of being the only person capable of accessing your temporary address, DodgeIt may be the way to go.
4. Guerilla Mail: The free disposable email which allows you to reply email as well
Guerilla Mail has one unique feature that makes it stand out from the rest: it’s the only temporary email provider which allows you to reply to emails you receive, just like a regular email address. While this may not seem very practical for verification notices, some websites do require a written reply to verify your existence; so in such cases, Guerilla Mail will be your only alternative. In addition, Guerilla Mail can also act as a proxy email address for contacting people during those one-time reply situations, so you don’t have to go to the trouble of creating a separate account in Gmail or Hotmail just to accommodate these instances.
If you’re thinking of upgrading, Guerilla Mail does offer additional benefits such as an account without an expiration date, email forwarding capabilities and no advertisements. The interesting take on this is that you get to decide on how much you want to pay for these bonuses, so it’s really an example of how far Internet service providers have come until now.
5. My Trash Mail: The disposable email service which allows both public and private accounts
My Trash Mail works in a similar fashion to Mailinator, in that it’s a site which provides free disposable email addresses for whatever your needs may be. As their site describes, any time you are asked for an email address to sign up to a newsletter, register at a forum, or for any other purpose, you can use the email prefix yourname@thankyou2010.com to automatically register for a temporary email address at their website, where you can receive your verification emails, serial codes and such.
It may be a simple concept, but using phantom email accounts can go a long way in blocking out spam before it has a chance to reach your private email address.
This post was written by Aaron Pek and edited by James Yeang. If you wish to write for this site, please contact me.
[...] feel less inclined to use a legitimate email address. Luckily I found this article over at Friedbeef.com on 5 ways to navigate around receiving spam – with free disposable email [...]