Well, if you just take a moment to scrutinize them, you’ll find out they are daily bombarded with hundreds of E-mails that you don’t ever read, and that’s because you don’t really need them. But still you get them. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that this daily overload of useless junk (pun intended) is what we call SPAM. Essentially, it’s impossible to completely eliminate spam 100% from your inbox. Because unwittingly we use our “primary” E-mail addresses to sign up for a multitude of services we never really need. Today, ILFS is going to tell you about Disposable Email addresses. Sounds weird? Keep reading.
What is a Disposable Email address?
A disposable Email address essentially has the same defining characteristic that any other disposable product has. You use them, and then you throw them away. As simple as that. That means that unlike real E-mail addresses, that remain active forever (unless you close your account manually), disposable E-mail addresses automatically expire (and thus become invalid) after a set amount of time.
Why using Disposable Email addresses is a good idea?
Disposable E-mail addresses are developed to counter the biggest bane of E-mail technology, namely SPAM. And they do it quite effectively. Here’s a quick step by step overview that tells you how disposable Email addresses save you (and your inbox) from SPAM.
- You need to signup for a service that requires you to enter an E-mail address. It could be anything from a forum, to a website that requires your E-mail to enable you to comment.
- You have to give your E-mail as that infamous “registration E-mail” would be sent to it, to activate your account. But you are hesitant as it would make your E-mail address a permanent target of SPAM from them.
- Here’s what you do to solve this problem. You sign-up for a “temporary” or “disposable” E-mail service. This service provides you with a temporary E-mail address that you can use to sign up.
- You sign up using the temporary E-mail address, receive the registration E-mail, and do what it says, from the disposable E-mail service provider’s Webmail UI.
- After a specific time limit, that temporary E-mail address expires.
- Voila!! You’ve just registered on that nice web forum, without giving out your real E-mail address. Take that SPAM!!
Some really good Web services providing Temporary E-mail addresses!!
The list below mentions a number of really nice Temporary E-mail services. Check them out.
1.) 10 minute mail
This is a really good E-mail service, whose name explains it all. You access the homepage, and you’re given a randomly generated E-mail address that lasts for 10 minutes. Though you can make it available for more time as per your requirement by increasing the time of its availability in slots of 10 minutes.
2.) Guerrilla mail
This temporary E-mail address provider provides a little more features as compared to the others. For starters, you can have up to 9 aliased domains but still the E-mail would arrive on the temporary E-mail generated when you visit the website first. What’s more, you can set your own random “username” if you don’t like the randomly generated one. The duration of temporary E-mail address’ validity is 1 hour, after which they’re deleted.
3.) Hide my ass
Now that’s a cool name. But jokes apart, hide my ass is a really solid service. Hell, it’s a lot better than the competitors. What sets it apart from the competition is that Hide my ass offers you a bunch of tools to protect your privacy, and temporary E-mail is one of them. Besides that, it provides Web and IP proxies, privacy software and VPN services. Another reason why Hide my ass’s temporary E-mail service is different is because of the fact that you’re required to create an account to get a temporary E-mail account. And you can set your temporary E-mail account to expire in a specific duration (ranging from 1 day to 1 year).
Above is a screenshot illustrating how to create a temporary E-mail account at hide my ass (@hmamail.com)
And below’s an E-mail received at the temporary E-mail address. In my opinion, the UI looks pretty cool for a temporary E-mail service.
Conclusion:
With an increasing number of SPAM emails landing in our inboxes with each passing day, keeping E-mail productive is getting more and more challenging. The entire practice of checking the SPAM folder every time you login to your E-mail address and then deleting it is both counterproductive and frustrating. Temporary or Disposable E-mail services act like godsend in such scenarios. They effectively eliminate SPAM to the maximum possible extent by removing our “real” E-mail addresses from the picture. And thus help our real inboxes stay lean, mean and clean.
You can also check out free temporary email address services reviewed by us.
What do you guys think about these disposable Email services? Do you use them on a daily basis? If yes, how useful do you find them to be? Do let me know your thoughts in the comments.
