Best sites for creating a disposable email address

As stated in the article below, a person's email becomes less and less private almost every day. Just think of this holiday season and how many times you have added your email to a vendor, list, checkout or anything involving communications interaction. It adds up in a hurry. So there are naturally some solutions which address this situation. It is assumed that all of this advice is given for only the most ethical reasons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Brandon Widder  —   Digital Trends - December 18, 2013

 

Not every program and service advertised as “free” may come with a $20 price tag or a meager free trial, but they undoubtedly come at a price: your oh-so-precious email address and trust.

Nowadays, anything and everything you register for — from online forums and shopping sites to services and application downloads — requires you to hand over a valid email address in order access the product or site’s particular set of features. It’s certainly not the most demanding criteria you’re likely to encounter during said registration, but it’s likely the most common and the biggest nuisance of them all once your inbox becomes flooded with an abundance of spam you didn’t intend to receive. I know I’ve certainly received my fair share of peculiar emails while signing up for the hodgepodge of utilities I test on behalf of Digital Trends. Trust me, Viagra is only the beginning.

Fortunately, disposable email addresses have been around for years, providing a convenient and free solution to those sticky situations that render you hesitant to give out your real email address. Although each service will supply you with a fake and temporary address capable of being dished out like hot cakes to whomever you’d like, the bulk of them differ in terms of hallmark features and simple utilities that set them apart from one another. For instance, some may require you to read email within a Web interface while others will merely forward them to your actual inbox.

Here are our picks for the best sites for creating a disposable email address so you can remain anonymous and abstain from an inbox burgeoning with advertisements for male enhancers, online degrees, and whatever else you probably don’t need in your life right now (or ever).

Non-forwarding disposable email services

GuerrillaMail

While technically disposable, GuerrillaMail email addresses are also timeless. Each address can be tailored using one of nine different domain names and a custom inbox ID, much like a standard email address, making address options virtually limitless whether you rely on domain names like “sharklasers.com” or “guerrillamail.net.” Although the email address you choose at GuerrillaMail will never actually expire, recently-received emails that appear in your email inbox will automatically be deleted within an hour regardless if they’ve been viewed or not. Additional tools for encrypting your inbox ID and filtering unwanted spam is also built into the software, as is a simple email composer and capable of sending attachments up to 150 MB with little fanfare.

When Mailinator boasts it’s “a different kind of email service on its site,” it’s not kidding around. The free service is a unique service on the Web, essentially offering a public address owned and accessible by anyone with an Internet connection. Instead of relying on a signup process or built-in creator like other services on our roundup, Mailinator creates an account for whatever email address you use as soon as a email arrives for that address. For instance, if you register for a service with the address “boondocks@mailinator.com”, the site will create an account for that particular address if one doesn’t exist already. Afterward, you can simple navigate to the Mailinator’s homepage and type in your inbox of choice — as can anyone else since the inbox lacks any sort of password protection. Also, although emails are deleted from the system after a few hours, email addresses will remain intact indefinitely. However, keep in mind many mainstream sites like Facebook already block the well-known domain.

10 Minute Mail

Ten minutes isn’t a lot of time, but it’s often more than enough to hand out your disposable email address to the masses. Ten Minute Mail isn’t swimming with features — it won’t even let you create your own custom address — but it instead revels in simplicity. Once you arrive at the site’s homepage, it will provide you with an auto-generated email address that will expire after 10 minutes unless you opt for an additional 10 minutes using the short link below your given email address. Additionally, there are various inbox settings located at the bottom of the page for viewing messages and a link above your given email address for quickly copying the address to your clipboard. It doesn’t boast a highly-robust interface or tool set, but services for creating throwaway emails rarely need to.

Fake Inbox

With an accompanying domain name like “fakeinbox.com”, the basic site clearly has nothing to hide. Users can choose either an auto-generated or custom username, but each will expire once the 60-minute doomsday clock at the bottom of the page hits zero. However, there are options for refreshing the email address’ lifespan and instantly deleting it, and the site offers the ability to read as well as reply to any email you receive within the dark interface. Note that the site does come with a few banner ads you want to avoid clicking like most email services, but other than that, our qualms are few and far in between.
Air Mail

Using a disposable email service doesn’t necessarily mean you have to sacrifice the well-known comforts of traditional email. Air Mail is a perfect case in point, a disposable email service that offers several perks often reserved for more comprehensive email clients. The site will auto-generate an email address upon your arrival, as well as begin checking for messages every 10 seconds, but you can always cycle through the email addresses until you find one with a username and domain you prefer. Incoming emails are displayed within the classic interface and accompanied by an alert notification, and you can continually access the inbox by returning to the site using the same browser or your private inbox URL on another machine. The email address will also remain valid as long as you keep your browser window active, only disappearing after 24 hours of inactivity, and Air Mail claims to hide your IP address from the sender to prevent third-party theft of information.

Forwarding disposable email services

Melt Mail

Melt Mail isn’t revolutionary in terms of features and utilities, but it’s yet another tried-and-true service took tuck away within your tool belt. Upon accessing the site’s homepage, users will be prompted to enter the real email address they would like their email forwarded to, as well as select the duration of the forwarding service. Afterward, the site will provide a temporary email address and a clock indicating for how long the address will remain valid (i.e. three, six, 12 and 24 hours). The lack of a privacy statement is somewhat concerning — the point of using a disposable email is to avoid giving out your real email — but it’s not a bad solution if you’re looking for an incredibly sleek and straightforward solution for using a disposable email with forwarding capabilities. There’s even a free iOS and Android app for creating and saving fake email addresses to your clipboard on the go. 

Easy Trash Mail

Easy Trash Mail takes Melt Mail’s forwarding duration to the next level, albeit with a tan-and-olive interface that’s a bit more clumsy to use. Once users navigate to the site’s homepage, they merely enter their real email address in the text field and select how long they would like the resulting, temporary email to last. Duration options are a little more extensive than others offered on our roundup, from 15 minutes and six hours to two weeks and an entire month, but the email forwarding will cease at the end of the allotted time no matter the amount of time you choose. Again, the service only offers email forwarding from an Easy Trash Mail domain, meaning all emails must be read in your real inbox opposed to a Web interface, but the service will also notify you 10 minutes before the disposable email expires so you can quickly peruse your inbox for any worthwhile message you may have missed.

Trash Mail

Not to be confused with aforementioned Easy Trash Mail, the German-built Trash Mail is a different type of disposable email service — one constructed with Chrome and Mozilla Firefox add-ons in mind. Both the site and add-ons require users to input their real email address for temporary email forwarding, but Trash Mail includes a limited number of forwards in addition to standard options for selecting the life span of the email address. For instance, users can limit the number of forwarded emails to one, 10 or even 10,000 and set the temporary email address’ life span anywhere from one day to 6 months (or indefinite). On top of that, users can personally create the fake email addresses using more than 10 varying domain names, as well as filter incoming emails using a CAPTCHA system and set up automatic notifications informing them when their account has expired. Trash Mail might be overkill for the average user, but the coupled browser add-ons make creating disposable emails on the fly a breeze without having to navigate elsewhere. 


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