The Hindu Business Line : Stay out, spam

Once you enter the global village, your e-mail address could get pushed into the hands of spammers. There is a plethora of ways that spammers can use to harvest your address. Mostly, spammers search Internet sites such as Web pages, blogs, posts, online forums, mailing lists and chat rooms to grab email-IDs.

Not only do spammers dump their messages into your e-mail account but they also encroach on your mail storage capacity. How do you get rid of these unwanted visitors? Try this option: temporary e-mail address.

When you use these (receive-only) disposable email addresses, you can keep your main e-mail address safe, as well as stay out of spammers’ sight.

Here are some Web sites that provide ‘disposable e-mail’ addresses. Also, they have no sign-up formalities:

www.bugmenot.com is an instant disposable e-mail service. It will keep your e-mails for a maximum of 24 hours. When forced to register for a site, often you’ll need to provide an e-mail address to receive a ‘verification’ link. Next time, provide a pseudo-random e-mail address, such as xufys@bugmenot.com and read the reply e-mails on the Web site.

www.mailinator.com: Here, you don’t need to sign up. You can receive only the plain text messages. Images, attachments, and fancy stuff are simply stripped away. Other rejection criteria include e-mail size (maximum 120k), and too many recipients.

Go to the Web site and type in the e-mail name (the temporary e-mail ID you named it) in “Check your inbox!”, then click “Go!”, and Mailinator will display the list of e-mail waiting. Here the mailbox holds only 10 messages at a time.

www.tempinbox.com is a free, receive only e-mail service. By using a temporary e-mail address, you can sign up for various Web sites without the worry that your real e-mail address will be added to a spam list. Pick a disposable e-mail address, anything up to 12 characters.

www.mytrashmail.com: This Web site provides two services i.e. Temporary E-mail (Disposable E-mail) and Secure Temporary E-mail.

In ‘temporary email’ service, no registration or password is needed. According to the Web site, your e-mails are kept between 12 hours and 30 days on its server. In ‘secure temporary’ email, you have to secure an e-mail account. According to the Web site, the secure temporary e-mail service will function the same as temporary anonymous e-mail but is protected with a password.

www.contactify.com: Here, you need to create a free Contactify link through a sign-up box. Post your Contactify (contactify.com/your-link-number) anywhere you like. According to the Web site, it is very useful for blogs, forums, messageboards, social networks, in fact anywhere where you would normally post your e-mail address in public. Anyone who clicks on this link is taken to your personal contact form. You can evade spammers because Contactify uses a link that doesn’t reveal your e-mail address.

Tip for the day: To delete a message permanently from Outlook Express, press Shift + Del.

jaish@thehindu.co.in