Disposable Email Addresses - Everything You Need To Know

Tired of fighting spams all day? Well, don’t put up with it anymore. Know how a disposable email address works and use it to the best of your advantage.

In modern-day, literally every person you know has an email address. From communicating with friends and acquaintances to using your email address as an online passport, the usage of email is now wide and varied. Today, almost all the apps and services you sign up for requires an email address, and so do most loyalty cards and contest entries.

Now, while it's nice to have a single address for everything, getting tons and tons of email messages every day that you really don't want to go through can be frustrating. Fortunately, there's a number of ways to go about your Gmail and Outlook inbox, but there’s a simple way through which you can end all the hassle, and that is a disposable email address.

In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about a disposable email address, and how you can start using disposable email addresses in multiple popular email systems like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.

What is a Disposable Email Address?

Before diving into the details, let us first understand what a disposable email address is.

These days, almost every service requires you to give your email address. However, the issue of spam and other unwanted email messages is increasing. Each time you give your email address, the likelihood of receiving more spam email increases.

Therefore, disposable email addresses can help you solve this problem. A disposable email address provides you a different email address each time you sign up for a service. It also keeps a tab of those unique email addresses so you can tell how much information spammers have.

Why Should I Use a Disposable Email Address?

The idea of a disposable email address might conjure visions of black hat hackers. It is understandable that most of us want to stay away from these aspects of the internet. However, there are plenty of legit reasons as to why you might want a disposable email address. Here are a few that highlight its necessity.

• Suppose, you want to sign up for a store’s loyalty card. But you would rather not get emails from the store advertising all their new products. In this case, use a disposable email address instead, and you'll never have to see those emails. Also, if the store gets hacked by any chance, your real email address will remain safe.
• In another situation, you just coded an amazing web app. Now, you want to test it rigorously before releasing it to the mass. Get 100 different disposable email addresses. You can now use them for dummy accounts and test right away.
• You probably want to sign up for another account with a web app. Maybe, you need another IFTTT account to automate a second Twitter account. Now, both these tasks will require a different email address than your default one. Rather than managing two different email inboxes, get a disposable email address.
• You want to write a completely anonymous email to a newspaper editor. Now, while that’s very easy to do with a paper mail, it’s not the same online. Hence, using a disposable email address is one of the few ways to do it online.

The ones mentioned here are only some of the many reasons why one should consider using a disposable email address. Let us now discuss some of the apps and tips you’ll need to get a disposable email address.

How Do I Create a Disposable Email Address And Start Using It?

The simplest way to use a disposable email address would be to make a new email account with Yahoo, Gmail, or any other free email service. But that's actually a lot of trouble for just one new email address. It would work if you'd like to use one mail to give away to companies and another you use for personal work. But if you need more accounts than that, a disposable email address is a better option.

Here are some of the simplest ways to make disposable email addresses. We’ll also discuss how you can start using them in 4 popular email systems.

1. Gmail - Generate Disposable Email Address Aliases

Do you know who actually gives away your email address when you notice spam showing up in your inbox? If you ever wanted to know about that, now you can do so with custom email addresses in Gmail.

While Gmail does not offer anonymous disposable email addresses, you can add a period anywhere in your email address. Next, add any text you want after it to make a new email alias.

For instance, if you were signing up for MegaCorp, Inc.'s newsletter, don't enter [email protected].

Rather, add a plus sign to the end of your email address and type whatever you want after it. For instance, you could send an email to [email protected] or [email protected].

Now, when a spam mail arrives, click the down arrow next to “To me:” It will display where the email is coming from as well as whom it was sent to.

So, you can check which email alias it was sent to. So, if you receive a discount offer about toys and you look at who it was sent to and see [email protected], you will know who gave away your email address. The ‘+megacorp’ lets you know that the MegaCorp, Inc. newsletter gave away your email address. Hence, unsubscribe right away!

These same email address aliases provide a great way to automatically filter your incoming emails. Note that Gmail disposable email addresses aren’t very private. However, they’re a suitable option to see how people got your email address and filter it instantly.

2. Mailinator

Mailinator is an email service built on a unique concept: anyone can access any inbox, just so as long as you know its email address. So, you can literally come up with any inbox name you want, add @mailinator.com at the end, and use it in any email address field to signup for an online newsletter.

Here's how you use Mailinator to create a disposable email address.

At first, go to Mailinator’s website. Enter the new email address. Then, click the green ‘Check it’ box and the inbox will open. You won’t require a password. You'll see emails that have been sent to that address. You may also notice emails you didn't sign up for in case someone else has used that same email address before.

The email inbox interface works mostly the same as expected. You can read and reply to emails, download attachments, and a lot more. It's a fully-featured email system where all emails you receive are public and viewable to anyone who knows the email address.

Mailinator is not private at all. The address is no way tied to you. Any reply to it is public. However, it is an incredibly simple way to get a disposable email address for anything you want, making it perfect for a fully anonymous email address (albeit one where any replies you may receive are public) or for testing out your new web app. You could even set up Mailinator on your own domain as an even better way to test out your own services.

3. Airmail

Airmail is another private email system quite similar to Mailinator. However, it offers a lot more privacy. Once you click a button, you get a random email by default along with a unique code. This code lets you see any message that the address receives online without a password.

To get a new email address, just go to the Airmail site and click the “Get Temporary Email” option. Soon after, an inbox view will show up with your new and randomly assigned email address as well as the unique access code in the address bar. You'll need to copy the URL with both codes in the address to be able to view any email you receive.

For example, say the email address you were randomly assigned was [email protected], and in your browser's address bar, it showed the address as “getairmail.com/fahrenheit/INGX”.

In such a case, the first code is the address of the email, and INGX was your unique code. In the future, to access the mailbox, just type or copy the URL from the browser's address bar. You'll be able to access your email instantly. However, this will only work for up to 24 hours since you last visited the page. After that time, the emails will be deleted.

Airmail is a great way for creating a random email address. However, it is worth noting that the site is not SSL encrypted. So, your communications still aren't totally private. The extra steps you'll need to take to get an email address implies that it's far from the best service for testing out random accounts on your new app.

4. Yahoo! Mail

It’s important to note that Gmail is not the only traditional email service that offers disposable email address services. Yahoo! Mail has built-in disposable email addresses that are actually unique, unlike the email aliases that Gmail offers.

Yahoo! Mail’s disposable email addresses consist of two things - a base name and a keyword. All the addresses you make will be structured as “[email protected]”. The basename can be set only once. This must be unique and all your addresses will share the same base name. After that, you are allowed to create up to 500 keywords. This gives you the chance to create 500 unique email addresses in one account.

To set up your base name, log in to your Yahoo account at first. Click the “Settings” icon on the top right side of the page after which you should click “Settings” on the drop-down menu. Next, click “Security”.

You'll find an option called “Create Base Name”. Click on that and choose a private name to use at the start of your disposable email address. After creating a base name, click  “Add” to add your keywords for particular addresses.

You will then be able to choose whether to block spam and use automatic filters on that address and which inbox to forward the email to.

Note that your Yahoo! email addresses a100% private—they're more private than Gmail aliases, of course, but they're still tied to your primary email account. They're great for most temporary email address uses, though, and give you more privacy than Gmail with the same benefits of having your emails in one inbox, and the simple ability to filter them as you'd like.

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