Your e-mail address is associated with a lot of legitimate services that you want information from.
It can be very annoying then when you come across a dodgy looking site asking for your details in order to access an article or login. There is often no way of you knowing what they will do with your e-mail address after your hand it over.
Even if they don’t sell it onto a 3rd party they might plan on sending daily/weekly/monthly updates about services and offers you don’t care about.
This is where disposable e-mails come into play. Over the last few years several services have been created which allow you to sign up to websites using quick and easy fake e-mail accounts. Both protecting your privacy and keeping your e-mail account free of spam.
Some of the popular ones are:
Guerrilla Mail – Has been around for a few years, allows you to choose a fake e-mail address from up to 9 domains and keeps your e-mail for an hour before deleting it.
10 Minute Mail – Creates a fake inbox that lasts 10 minutes (you have an option to extend it for 10 minute chunks if needed) This one is best for services you only want to sign into once.
Fake Inbox – Creates a fake inbox that lasts 1 hour.
All the above services are simple to use and take a couple of seconds to generate an inbox for you to use for verification. Just remember not to use them for services you may want access to in the future as once they are gone, you cannot get them back.
How do I use a disposable e-mail service?
As an example we’ll take 10 minute mail and go through the process
- You come across a website which requires an e-mail address to login. You don’t fully trust the site to not sell your details onto 3rd parties or you suspect they may start bombarding you with offers via e-mail.
- Visit 10 minute mail and copy the e-mail address it is showing on the screen
- Use this address to sign up to the website you want access to
- go back to the 10 minute mail page and wait for the verification e-mail to arrive. Click any verification link given and enjoy using your verified account on the new website.
- Forget about your fake e-mail address, it will be deleted in 10 minutes.
Urban Security Research 