Top 5 Disposable And Temporary Email Providers To Avoid Spam

Temporary disposable email accounts can help protect your real email address from spam and phishing attempts. Sometimes you need a quick email address for just one email – you don’t care what happens to it afterwards.

Examples include free download sites which request your email address to send you a link to the download (my pet hate), signing up for special offers/vouchers and registering on a website to post a comment etc.

The more you use your real email address in such situations, the more likely it is to be spammed in future or sold on for ‘marketing’ purposes (quasi-official spam).

[Note: TechLogon does not sell or spam your email so feel free to use your real address here – but you don’t have to. Obviously if you sign up with us for follow-up comments on an article or to our daily email RSS feed you won’t receive them if your email address is not valid]

A temporary email address lets you use it for one-off purposes. Most providers do not require you to sign up to obtain a disposable email address – you can create one as and when you need it.

no-spamA Warning On Privacy – Most free temporary email services offer no password and no security for the disposable email address and inbox – anyone who knows/guesses the email address could access and read emails in your inbox!

Do not use disposable email addresses for anything private, important or where logon passwords or personal info might be sent to the email address. They are best used on sites where you either never had to enter any personal details or you entered fictitious details just to progress through the site.

It is a good idea to choose a unique email address/mailbox name e.g. roy@xyz is easily guessed whereas ro2012ys@xyz is much harder.

Ideally, some services offer a random email address alias which points to your chosen email address – the idea is that you give out the (very hard to guess) alias and emails to it come into your own temporary inbox.

There are many services offering free temporary disposable email accounts.

A summary of my top 5 is below – in no particular order.

Mailinator

Mailinator is a long established provider of free disposable temporary email addresses in the format [email protected]

  • No sign-up or password
  • Inboxes are created when email arrives for them so you can make up email addresses on the fly. Make up the address and give it to others.
  • Visit Mailinator and check your inbox via webmail
  • Alternatively you can use POP3 to pull the email into an email program like Live Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook Express etc
  • Offers alternate inbox names with random addresses linked to your inbox e.g. the alternate name for ‘joe’ is ‘M8R-yrtvm01’ so you can give out the email address of [email protected] and the email will arrive in your ‘joe’ inbox
  • Mails are deleted after a day (or sooner). Maximum of 10 emails stored at once
  • All attachments (pictures, binary files etc) are stripped out

YOPmail

Provides free disposable temporary email addresses in the format [email protected]

  • No sign-up or password
  • Inboxes are created when email arrives for them so you can make up email addresses on the fly. Make up the address and give it to others.
  • Visit YOPmail and check your inbox via webmail
  • Mails are deleted after 8 days. Can view the email in full HTML if required
  • More than 10 alternate domains are offered – in case a website blocks an @yopmail.com address from being used.

10MinuteMail

Popular free and (very!) temporary email addresses in the format [email protected] (changes regularly)

  • No sign-up or password (but utilizes a cookie for privacy)
  • Visit the website to receive an email address – any emails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page
  • You can read, click on links and even reply to them
  • The mail address will be deleted after 10 minutes (you can request 10 more minutes if that is insufficient)
  • A temporary cookie is used to allow the service to deliver the email to the right person, but will expire when you close your browser. In theory this should provide more privacy than the other services as access to the mailbox is dependent on the cookie stored on your computer. However, if you close your browser (or clear cookies) you will not be able to access your inbox…

GuerrillaMail

Free disposable temporary email addresses in the format [email protected] (or several other domains)

  • No sign-up or password
  • Visit the website to create a temporary email address – any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page
  • Hypertext enabled. Emails messages sent to the address are held for one hour before they are deleted, whether you check them or not

Airmail

Free disposable temporary email addresses in a variety of formats

  • No sign-up or password
  • Visit the website to create a temporary email address – any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page
  • Hypertext enabled. As long as you keep your browser window open, your inbox will keep getting emails. Once closed, the mailbox is deleted after 24 hours

Conclusion

Temporary disposable email addresses can be useful when asked for an email address by a site where you do not want to reveal your real email address or personal details.

Although most services offer no (or very little) security, they are ideal for one time use which does not involve personal information, passwords or important data.

2 thoughts on “Top 5 Disposable And Temporary Email Providers To Avoid Spam”

  1. Emailondeck.com

    This is a secure, private, temp email service that’s simple to use. It creates email addresses that are much more difficult to be recognized as disposable emails that the others listed here.

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