Easy Throw-Away Email Addresses

netbuzz writes, "A fellow teaching himself Seam has come up with a clever Web app called 10 Minute Mail. It gives you a valid e-mail address — instantly — for use in registering at Web sites. Ten minutes later (more if you ask), it's gone. You can read mail and reply to it from the page where you create the throw-away address. Limited utility, yes, but easy and free."

How is this better than dodgeit.com?

[hemp]

Dodgeit.com is free and allows to you to specify any email [e-mail] and read the emails that arrive.
http://www.dodgeit.com/ [dodgeit.com]

Dodgeit.com does the same thing

[tokengeekgrrl]

Receive only free email that automatically gets deleted every 7 days unless you make a donation, then you get to password protect and own the email address (as I do).

http://dodgeit.com/faq.html [dodgeit.com]

- tokengeekgrrl

SpamGourmet seems better...

[Tamerz]

I have been using SpamGourmet http://www.spamgourmet.com/ [spamgourmet.com] for a while. It works great and is more flexible. This is going to run into the same problem other services like this do. Sites will simply stop accepting emails from that domain name.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[Anonymous Coward]

Mailinator is a great and possibly better alternative to TMM. It appears that the email address TMM generates does expire in such a way that it rejects email to the address you are given after a period of time (10 minutes). With mailinator, the email address never expires, but mail that is delivered tends to be purged after a few hours. Mailinator works so well that I have found some sites don't let you use mailinator addresses in the sign up process. Luckily they have set up alternative domains that point their mail to mailinator's servers allowing you to use alternative domain names in your temporarily email address.

Unnescessary but nice with more options

[Kattspya]

I know of at least two different sites which give out disposable e-mail addresses so I don't really understand why this is newsworthy.

http://www.spamgourmet.com/ [spamgourmet.com]
You create an account and spamgourmet will bounce the mail to you. The syntax is: [word].[number of mails].[username]@spamgourmet.com. When the alloted number of e-mails has been used the mails will bounce unless you allow more through.

http://www.mailinator.com/ [mailinator.com]
You just make up a string of letters and use those letters to view the account at mailinator. This is a truly disposable mail address since the inbox is open to anyone who chooses to look at the account. If the information is semiimportant you should choose a pretty random mail address.

Other spam-fighting mail services

[overbored]

First, there are tons of other services that do this already. However, I personally am not very interested in expiring addresses; I frequently want to keep receiving mail at that address into the future (and some services simply don't allow you to update your email address, in which case you're screwed).

Up until last year I've been using the popular (and open-source) Spamgourmet. It caps you at a max of 20 messages, though, so if you want to keep receiving mail at that address, you need to continually reset the message count (and a burst of mail exceeding the limit will result in lost messages). Furthermore, a lot of spammers have been targeting it lately, generating email address like [e-mail] or [e-mail]. Yes, you can solve this by requiring watchwords, but then you need to remember to add that substring into all your future email addresses.

Another one that I've been using a bunch is mailnull.com, which lets you explicitly create addresses in the form of [e-mail]. A disadvantage is that you cannot use it as an outgoing proxy for sending mail.

Finally, there's sneakemail.com, which is like mailnull, except you work with completely mangled names ([e-mail]), and it does proxy outgoing mail (so I use it when signing up for things where I may want to reply, i.e. mailing lists). At first, the sneakemail site is a complete turn-off, but the service is probably the closest to what I'd want to use.

yet another recommend: bugmenot.com

[muel]

http://www.bugmenot.com/ [bugmenot.com] -- for when you need a username/pass to log into a particular free site (New York Times, AllMusic, etc.) but don't want to bother registering. Assumedly, this site will knock out half of your reasons to use these various quickie e-mail services. Enjoy!

Re:Just buy a domain.

[Ant P.]

And you don't even need a domain - GMail lets you use <username>+slashdot@gmail for the same effect.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[plover]

I've been using Mailinator for throw-away web page signups for years, but I use Sneakemail [sneakemail.com] for the purchasing sites where I'd like to be notified about shipments, etc.

I have to say I like the idea of a 10 minute window. Several hours means I can't really use it to have them send me passwords, as I frequently have name collisions at Mailinator.

In the same vein, I dislike the lack of a "roll-your-own" email address that Mailinator offers. With Mailinator, I can simply type [e-mail] and not worry about visiting Mailinator's site first. With TMM, I have to hit their site to get the randomly generated [e-mail] address (and yes, they're slashdotted at the moment.)

2Prong Mailinator 10 Minute Mail

[shawnmchorse]

I use these throwaway e-mail addresses quite a lot in testing various web applications (which often require unique e-mail addresses for each registration or whatever). A lot of people have already mentioned Mailinator, so I'll also mention 2Prong [2prong.com]. I came across it one day when Mailinator was down for whatever reason. It has a couple of things in its favor. First, it only uses a domain for two days before moving on to a different domain for throwaway e-mail addresses. So the likelihood of you ever finding the domain blocked is essentially nil. Second, it works completely automatically. All you do is copy/paste the e-mail address, use it, and then the page auto-refreshes when it gets the confirmation e-mail or whatever it is you're looking for. Nice and clean.

Direct Link to the site

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to go to the site directly, go here:

10MinuteMail.com [10minutemail.com]

Re:What's the point?

[wowbagger]

If the site needs to mail you something to complete the registration, you have to be able to read the email address - and having one address that collects a ton of crap makes it hard to read the email address and get that one mail you care about to complete the registration.

Yes, if the site wants an email address, but you don't need to receive any emails from the site to continue, give it "i_dont_want_spam@localhost", or "[e-mail]"

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot send emails through mailinator, anonymous mailing isn't part of their service offering. It is designed strictly for recieving email you don't want.

Re:Brick stores need your email address!

[wiredlogic]

Yahoo provides throwaway addresses (addressguard) to paying subscribers. They last indefinitely and provide useful delivery options. I use this feature for sites I don't trust and for usenet to make it easier to sort out their spam. The old Yahoo mail interface would color code mail sent to different addressguard adresses. This isn't yet in the new interface unfortunately.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[Khabok]

How about Vs. GMail? Ever heard of plus-addressing? I've been using it lately with great results.

[e-mail] always goes straight to [e-mail], BUT with a distinct TO address. That way you know which service sold you to spammers, and you can prop up a filter to faithfully dispose of them.

Of course, like any of these services, it only works until the big baddies find out...

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[whoever57]

How about Vs. GMail? Ever heard of plus-addressing? I've been using it lately with great results.
[e-mail] always goes straight to [e-mail], BUT with a distinct TO address.

I also use this whenever possible. Unfortunately, many web developers think that a "+" in an email address is not valid, even if used before the "@". Or maybe they are too lazy to develop rules that apply different checks for the part before the "@" and the part after, or whatever. The unfortunate fact is that many website registration systems simply won't accept emails like "[e-mail]".

Re:Banned

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go Danny Boy, chew on this [2prong.com]. Today's domain is ajaxislame.com. Be sure to check every other day.

Let me add another suggestion:

[StarfishOne]

http://www.mytrashmail.com/ [mytrashmail.com]

Very handy temporary email accounts.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[spacecowboy420]

My favorite is to just have a catchall on my domain. Then when I signup for something, I use a descriptive address plus my domain. This allows me to not only get all the mail, I know who I gave it to, and who is selling/spamming. If they start to spam, I just turn it off or dev/null all mail to that address.

Another list

[h3]

Here's another list:

http://www.listible.com/list/disposable-email-serv ices [listible.com]

I also don't know why this 10minutemail site is getting the attention it is. I like jetable and shortmail myself (option to forward).

Yahoo has been doing this for years

[jamonterrell]

At least on my SBC Yahoo account I've been able to do so... you click the button and it creates a fake e-mail address that forwards to your real one and lets you send on behalf of it.. just delete it when you're done.

Re:Unnescessary but nice with more options

[Macgyver7017]

Actually, spamgourmet doesn't bounce the messages once the address expires, it just silently discards them. This is nice since it doesn't tip off the site that your address was/is invalid.
-Jon

Re:Just buy a domain.

[Evro]

Most email verification functions consider + an illegal character; quite annoying for the above use. You can also intersperse '.' in your gmail username wherever you want; that does work everywhere.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[zollman]

It gets worse. Recently a spammer used my domain as their From address, with a randomly generated username part.

For the three days the spam went on, I was getting upwards of 100 emails an hour, mostly bounces and out-of-office messages. Very hard to separate out the real messages.

Be careful with the catchall, and make sure you've got a separate mailbox for important stuff.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[matthewcraig]

Caution! I tried this many years ago, on a suggestion from a slashdot comment, no less. Feeling impervious to spam, I used descriptive email addresses + my domain on web forms everywhere. It wasn't long before the spam started piling up... big time. 100s of spam messages a day, including dictionary attacks against the domain. I started using spam-assassin tools. The tools worked well, blocking ~95% of the spam, however, by that time I was approaching 1000 spam messages a day. I was still getting ~50 spam messages each day... and rising. Eventually, the domain was getting hit with nearly 1500 spam messages a day, and I shut down my mail server service. For every 1 legitimate email, I was deleting over 100 spam messages. It has been down for a year, and I can only wonder if the endless waves of spam are attacking it. Thankfully, I was using co-located server hosting, so my personal network was not effected.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[1point618]

This is very true, and the trick I use to get around it is the fact that gmail treats [e-mail] the same as [e-mail] or [e-mail]. For sites I don't trust completely and who insist that + isn't valid, I use a different dot pattern, and if I start getting junk, I set up a filter. Works great.

Hmm, actually gmail does allow this

[xant]

Gmail lets you filter on basically anything you want. To implement the GP's suggestion, you would:

Give out your "real people" email address as [e-mail]

Give out your "websites" email address as [e-mail] (for example)

Set gmail to allow xant+hello to pass through the Inbox.

Set gmail to drop [e-mail] and xant+*@gmail.com into the spambox.

Mailing lists, too

[xant]

It occurs to me that you could even have a REALLY public email address that passed through gmail's filters properly.

The problem I have in mind is that I participate in (not just lurk on) several mailing lists. When I post, my email address is out there for spammers to find, eventually: gmane.org, among others, is a great place to harvest emails. What can I do about this? I actually want to get email on that address (the list itself) but I don't want spam to get through.

The solution:

- implement the post I just made, above.

- Sign up on the mailing list as [e-mail] (you may want to get more specific about which mailing list, but it's not really necessary)

- Set gmail to keep (or label and move) email matching To:[e-mail] AND From:(the real mailing list address)

- Set gmail to spambucket To:[e-mail] that isn't from the real mailing list.

True, it's possible to for a spammer to forge the From address, but that doesn't seem to happen very often. At least, in the lists where I participate.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[mattwarden]

This is what I do, and it worked great until spammers and worms started sending emails to random usernames at my domain, e.g. [e-mail] (my name ain't john), [e-mail] (ain't sue either), etc.

Firefox extension

[UrKHeH]

I wonder why nobody mentioned the following Firefox extension: Temporary inbox (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2650/ [mozilla.org]). It allows to work with disposable emails in one mouse click from the toolbar (well, maybe, two: one for email generation and one for checking).

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[dekkerdreyer]

Throw an SPF entry [openspf.org] in your DNS zone record, that helps keep spammers from using your domain as a FROM address. Worked for one of my domains.

Spamhole

[tsunamiiii]

Or you could use spamhole who came up with this idea years ago and not download anything and setup is only about 1 min rahter then 10.