Mailinator Offers an Easy, Convenient, Disposable Email

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 24 Feb 2011

I don’t know about you, but I have three email addresses I use frequently. When I need to send an email to Bob from accounting, I use my work email address. When I want to send a friend an email message, I use my personal email address. And when I need to subscribe to some dubious site, or test a piece of software that requires registration, I use Mailinator, because Mailinator offers me an easy to use disposable email address.

Say I downloaded an application and before I can use it I have to register. I have to provide my email address and a key will be sent to that address. Now I don’t know if the application’s developer is going to spam me or not, so it’s best to play it safe. So I use Mailinator.

Instead of providing my real email address, I provide an @mailinator.com email address, like george.norman@mailinator.com. To access the aforementioned email address I need only go to the Mailinator site at mailinator.com, then type in george.norman in the Check your inbox! box in the left hand side. Alternatively I can bookmark http://george.norman.mailinator.com/ and easily access the inbox.

The good thing is that if I was right and the app’s developer will spam george.norman@mailinator.com, I won’t give a rat’s ass. The bad thing is that I don’t exactly have much privacy using Mailinator. Anyone can check out the george.norman@mailinator.com inbox, read the emails, and even delete them. That’s why I won’t use that disposable email address anymore; I’ll use something else.

To ensure someone else won’t accidentally stumble across your disposable Mailinator address, make sure to pick a completely random address. Instead of george.norman, use ohestudmdbvcoy for example. I didn’t come up with that example on my own – Mailinator suggested it. In the left hand side of the page, under “Can’t think up an Address?” you can find suggestions for random addresses.

Sticking with the privacy theme we’ve got going on here, by giving out my Mailinator address I’m practically telling others how to access my Mailinator inbox and read the emails in there. There is a solution for this problem. For each address, Mailinator provides an alternate address; in this case the alternate address is M8R-pi91yk@mailinator.com. Instead of giving out george.norman@mailinator.com, I can give out M8R-pi91yk@mailinator.com. When the person I’ve given the Mailinator addresses checks M8R-pi91yk@mailinator.com, he won’t find anything. When I’ll check george.norman@mailinator.com, I’ll see whatever message was sent to M8R-pi91yk@mailinator.com.

To get started with Mailinator, just click here.


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