What is a disposable email account, what is it for and where to get one.
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Surely you have ever heard the term “throwaway” email account, which expires or to protect you from spam. Today we will explain what are throwaway emails exactly, in which cases they can be useful to you and we will present you a few alternatives that you can use.
You often need to create a user account to test applications or web services. The normal thing is to use your email account, but you expose yourself to receive spam and unwanted messages. This is how email accounts such as 10MinuteMail were born, which let you register on a site and then disappear.
What are throwaway emails
The name is quite descriptive, and it is called throwaway email accounts to those you use once and then forget about it, usually when you need to verify your identity by email and you don’t want to provide your real email address. They are used to receive messages, but (usually) not to send them.
These email accounts generally are generated automatically and they don’t even have a password, so under no circumstances should you use them to receive any kind of important information. This lack of security is compensated in part by the expiration date itself: some disappear automatically after 10 minutesWhile others survive up to 24 hours before deleting all messages.
They are appropriate to use when you are registering for a website or service that you don’t care and you know you won’t use later. If you use it on a site that you use frequently (for example, Facebook) you risk losing access to the account, because the email account will disappear and you will not be able to recover your password by email.
Or worse yet, then someone else will be using it, so you can use password reset by mail and log in. As you can see, email accounts with expiration are a very powerful tool, but that should be used with care.
What are they for
The concept is very simple: an email account that you can enter without even a password and that disappears by itself after time. What you can do with this is up to you, but these are some of the possibilities:
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Register on websites where you think your information will be sold: Sometimes you have no choice but to register on a website to see its content, no matter how bad it is. If that’s the case, the best thing you can do is use a temporary email account instead of your real one.
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If you have to use your email in a public place: If you need to post your email address in a place where anyone can see it, including bots that collect addresses for spam, a good alternative is throwaway addresses. Of course, remember that the address will cease to exist after time.
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To sign up for apps: More and more applications ask you to register to be able to use them. If you just want to skip the registry and are pretty sure you won’t be using the app again, use a throwaway address. If you change your mind later, you can probably change the email address associated with your account.
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When you go to buy something in a store and you do not want to be inundated with offers: If you are making an isolated purchase in a store and you do not want your mail to be inundated with related offers from that moment on, a temporary account is a good alternative.
How to create a temporary email account
There are many temporary webmail services, and each one works slightly differently. However, in most cases you don’t need to do anything special to create a throwaway email account. Since you don’t have a password, all you need is generate an address and you are ready to receive mail.
For example, in 10 Minute Mail, one of the most popular services, all you need is to open this web page in the browser. An email address is generated for you and you have ten minutes to use it. If you want, you can press the button to give yourself another ten minutes of extension, but once you close the tab, it disappears.
It’s just as easy on MailDrop, although in this case you can choose exactly what name you want your account to have after opening its website. Write it in the box and that’s it, you already have your email account to use and throw away ready to start receiving messages.
Lastly, some services like Free Temporary Email They allow you to customize both the email address you want and its domain, with a few options available. Otherwise, the operation is the same: you open its website, choose the address you want and you have it ready to receive messages.
Pages that offer temporary email accounts
Do you want a disposable email account? We have already mentioned a few before, but if you prefer them in a list, these are the temporary email account services More popular:
- 10 Minute Mail: email account that lasts 10 minutes. You cannot choose the name. It is somewhat more secure than other alternatives since no other person will receive the same email account.
- Mail Drop: with Mail Drop you can choose the name of your account, which will remain active as long as you continue to receive messages. Only the last ten messages are saved and there is no evidence (someone else can read the messages from the account you have created).
- YOPMail: you can also customize the name of your account, which in this case will expire after 8 days. It is also possible to write emails, something rare in throwaway email accounts.
- AirMail: the email accounts you create in AirMail will be automatically deleted after 24 hours, and it has the advantage of supporting rich text messages and of alerting you with a sound when a new email arrives.
- GuerrillaMail: another very veteran option in which you can choose between eleven different domains. Accounts do not expire per se, but all messages are deleted every hour. It is possible to compose messages, and even add attachments to them.
- Free Temporary Email: you have ten domains to choose from to create your email account, which will last up to 24 hours from the last time you check it. If you visit it every day, you can keep it active indefinitely.
In SamaGame | Five ways to generate disposable information to protect your identity on the Internet
