Create a Disposable E-mail Account on Your Domain
A you may have read in the past, I have been a big fan of temporary e-mail addresses. These are e-mail addresses that you can enter into a webpage and if they spam the website, who cares because you have already gotten the information that you need and the e-mails that go to the mailbox are automatically dumped after a period of time.
But, I knew it was only a matter of time before a number of these websites got smart to this type of thing. For example, if you were to enter a Mailinator e-mail address into an Aweber form, it would be rejected. And this is not limited to temporary accounts, either. Many free e-mail accounts like Hotmail and Gmail are all starting to be banned from these places as well. So what is a tech savvy person to do if they don’t want their e-mail to get spammed? The answer is to create your own custom temporary e-mail address!
Step 0: Get Your Own Domain Name
This this is not a critical step, it sure makes things easier. And with domain names so cheap these days (I’ve gotten them for as little as US$2 per year), there is little stopping you from having your own domain name. Many of you already have your own domain so you will not have to do this.
If you do need to purchase a domain name, I generally recommend GoDaddy.
Step 1: Determine Your Temporary E-Mail Provider and Address
There is no shortage of temporary e-mail providers. A simple Google search will provide you with a long list of companies that will allow you to create a disposable e-mail address. Remember this e-mail address.
Step 2: Create An E-mail Forwarder on Your Domain
Next, create an e-mail forwarder on your domain that points to the temporary e-mail address. You could use something like spamstopper@yourdomainname.com and forward it to spamstopper@mailinator.com.
Step 3: Use Your New Custom Temporary E-Mail Address
Now, whenever you need to provide an e-mail address on the web and the page looks a bit questionable, you can give your custom temporary e-mail address and then check the website for your e-mail.
Bonus Step 4: Set Up An Alias in Roboforms
If you really want to speed up getting that newsletter, you can create an alias at Fake Name Generator and then enter the information along with your new custom temporary e-mail address so that whenever you need to provide information, Robocopy will quickly fill in all of your fake information along with your custom temporary e-mail address.
If you don’t have roboforms, I have made arrangements for Daily Cup of Tech readers to get a copy for free. Just download, install, and go.
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One Response to “Create a Disposable E-mail Account on Your Domain”
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Joe Says:
March 14th, 2009 at 12:26 pmYou seem to have skipped a step: I don’t know of anyone that provides email services with a domain name (GoDaddy seems to offer email-only for $1.67 monthly). You need some kind of hosting, though Google Apps Standard Edition (formerly Google Apps for Your Domain) is a good free option. You could also register your domain through Google Apps.
On the other hand, if you’ve set up email on your domain and can set up an email address that you only use for spam, why bother going through the extra step of the temporary mailbox? If you’re only going to use it for temporary registrations and such, you can just create an account that you’ll ignore until you need it - that’s about all my Hotmail acount is for me, spam it all you want, I sure don’t care! After seeing this, however, I might just make a new email address on my domain. Even better, I’ll make a catch-all account, and submit a different email address every time I sign up (Aweber@MyDomain.com, for example) so I can see which ones result in the most spam. If you go the Google Apps route, you can just use this trick with plus signs to do something similar.
Lastly, I just can’t stand GoDaddy and their ridiculous advertising campaigns.
