How to Avoid Spam (Part 5 of 10) - Use a disposable email address
Use a disposable email address
Sites like Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail, and some smaller including Lycos, AIM mail, inbox.com and mail.com all offer free e-mail accounts to anyone. In Part 4 of this article I told you not to use any of the large ISP's, but this is an account that you won't care if you get spammed. Use this account wherever you have to use an email address on the web, like for registering or online purchases. You can check it when you like, to pick up the , but you can ignore anything else that gets sent to this account, and if it gets on the spammers' mailing lists, who cares? You don't have to pick an email address that sounds cool or means anything, since no one will see it. Another advantage is that many companies block personal email but allow web mail at the office, so you may be able to take care of online bills, purchases, etc. during your lunch hour at the office.
I still have an original MSN account, ahevle@msn.com, and it gets so much spam (100+/day) that it is worthless for anything else. I use that when I have to give an address that I don't care if it is compromised. I check it once in a while so it stays active, and delete the spam to avoid going over my capacity (250MB).
If you have your own domain, or if your ISP allows you to create aliases, you might want to create a throw-away email address. The down side of aliases is that most ISPs will forward all the email from an alias to your main account, and don't allow you to set up how each address is treated. I have created a separate email account for each vendor that I deal with regularly, so that I can try to track how my email addresses get into the hands of spammers. I don't forward the throw-away accounts back to my main address, I just periodically delete all the emails.
Never give your main email address to anyone who might spam you or give your email address to spammers. Use your throw-away email address. Never give your throw-away email address to anyone you want to receive emails from, or you'll end up having to sift through all the spam to get their emails, which is what we're trying to avoid in the first place. And don't make any exceptions, in Part 1 of this article I talk about an instance where one slip ruined an email account.
See tomorrow's posting for Part 6 of How to Avoid Spam.
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Sites like Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail, and some smaller including Lycos, AIM mail, inbox.com and mail.com all offer free e-mail accounts to anyone. In Part 4 of this article I told you not to use any of the large ISP's, but this is an account that you won't care if you get spammed. Use this account wherever you have to use an email address on the web, like for registering or online purchases. You can check it when you like, to pick up the , but you can ignore anything else that gets sent to this account, and if it gets on the spammers' mailing lists, who cares? You don't have to pick an email address that sounds cool or means anything, since no one will see it. Another advantage is that many companies block personal email but allow web mail at the office, so you may be able to take care of online bills, purchases, etc. during your lunch hour at the office.
I still have an original MSN account, ahevle@msn.com, and it gets so much spam (100+/day) that it is worthless for anything else. I use that when I have to give an address that I don't care if it is compromised. I check it once in a while so it stays active, and delete the spam to avoid going over my capacity (250MB).
If you have your own domain, or if your ISP allows you to create aliases, you might want to create a throw-away email address. The down side of aliases is that most ISPs will forward all the email from an alias to your main account, and don't allow you to set up how each address is treated. I have created a separate email account for each vendor that I deal with regularly, so that I can try to track how my email addresses get into the hands of spammers. I don't forward the throw-away accounts back to my main address, I just periodically delete all the emails.
Never give your main email address to anyone who might spam you or give your email address to spammers. Use your throw-away email address. Never give your throw-away email address to anyone you want to receive emails from, or you'll end up having to sift through all the spam to get their emails, which is what we're trying to avoid in the first place. And don't make any exceptions, in Part 1 of this article I talk about an instance where one slip ruined an email account.
See tomorrow's posting for Part 6 of How to Avoid Spam.
Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Next
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