Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Throwaway email addresses as a solution against spam

Most sites today require you to enter a valid email address when you want to create an account with them. For those that fear that their email address will then be used for spamming, throwaway email addresses might be a solution.

At least if you get the second email about “V|@gra” in your inbox you really wonder where the heck the spammers get your email address. A common hypothesis: At least one of the sites that require you to enter your email address has sold it.

The simple solution for this:

  • Go to http://www.jetable.org/en/index (Jetable, french for “throwaway”)
  • Enter your real email address
  • jetable.org will generate a new email address like xcicxkj399@jetable.org
  • Enter this email address as your email address on the site you wish to register
  • Any email that is send to the throwaway email address is sent to your real inbox for 24 hours
  • After that time the email address will simply be gone, deleted and vanished

Of course, this will render any “Forget your password? We sent it to you as email!” useless so you better have a backup of all your data present.

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