Create a Throw-Away Email Address

Spam can be annoying and time consuming. In a test, Northeast Netforce investigators “seeded” 175 different locations and monitored the fake addresses over the next six weeks for spam; 100 percent of email addresses used in chat rooms received spam; 86 percent of posts in newsgroups received spam. So what can you do to help reduce it? Bottom line: Don’t use your work address or personal address for open, public forums, where spammers are harvesting your email address. Create a screen name that isn’t associated with your email address or a “dummy” email address. Your ISP can automatically forward the “dummy” address to your “real” address. When spam builds up, delete the decoy. For $9.95 a year, you can get a block of 500 disposable email addresses to use from www.Spamex.com. You can also purchase spam-filtering software for your computer, which “grabs” junk email and files it in a special folder, separate from your real email in the in-box (my favorite is McAfee Spamkiller, www.McAfee.com).

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Comments

  1. Better Tip that costs nothing: http://www.mailinator.com

    When you have to Enter an E-Mail Address, take one you want @mailinator.com and check later on if a mail arrived.

    Great Service

    Greets

    Erich

  2. I use Yahoo mail for different email addresses.

  3. Another vote for mailinator. It supports RSS feeds, so you can check it that way. I use bloglines for RSS feed reading because it’s portable, and because it supports multiple generic email accounts – great for signing up for newsletters, etc.