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Mailinator

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One things that annoys me is these websites where you see an interesting articles that offers a free download of the article and then wants you to sign up and provide an email address so they may proceed to send you many emails that you do not really want to get.

 

One very useful site/utility that I have used to get around this problem/annoyance, which you might also find useful is Mailinator.  The following information was extracted from the Mailinator web site.    Mailinator is a very different kind of email service. The biggest difference is that you don't need to sign up.  Any email name you can think of already exists at Mailinator.com. Want This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.?   Want to be JacquesKooStow? ScaryGavyn? GraysonTheMason?  No problem. These users can all exist when you create them and they are just waiting for you to check your inbox.

    Mailinator is fundamentally quite different from other services. Other services like Gmail or Yahoo allow you to actually send email. You cannot send email from Mailinator.  After several hours, all email is auto-deleted.  A Mailinator email inbox can be read by anyone. There is no real security here.  Mailinator has strict rules about what kind of email it receives.  Plain text is best, html is filtered.  Images, attachments, and fancy stuff are simply stripped away.

    The upside is that Mailinator requires no sign-up.  Send email to a name, and the account is created automagically.

    In a nutshell, other services provide more functionality but require a sign-up (which takes time, even if you falsify all the information anyway). Mailinator provides less, but requires no sign-up.

 In our internet world, you often need an email address NOW. Signing up for an email service takes time.  That's probably ok for most emailing, but every now and then you need a quick email address for just a single email.  After that you don't care what happens to it.   Exactly the situation I described at the neginning.  Given that such an email address is ready in an instant, you can avoid giving out your real email address when you are afraid of getting spammed.  Instead, make up any address @mailinator.com on the spot and go check it later.

   Mailinator does not solve the Spam problem, but it does provide an opportunity for you to skirt one avenue that spammers use to spam you.  It's another tool in your spam-fighting toolbox.

    Mailinator gets many millions of emails per day.  But it doesn't matter because any email that gets sent to Mailinator is deleted after a day, sometimes sooner. After that time, it will be auto-deleted.

    You do not need an account because Mailinator will create an email account as soon as email arrives for it.  All you or anyone else needs to do is send email to the name you thought up and it will be there waiting for you.

    To get to read the email you visit mailinator.com and type in the email name where is says "Check your inbox!", then click "Go!", and Mailinator will display the list of email waiting.

    No password is required because the email name itself is the only key you need to get in.  This means that anyone could potentially get to read the email so you might want to pick an unusual name.  You can pick This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you want, but maybe you'd be better off with something longer!   Just remember that it is always perfectly possible for anyone to see an email if they know the name.   Mailinator generates a random name for you every time you visit the home page. If you want an obscure or unusual name, and you used up all your imagination today, you can use auto-gen name.

    Note that there are something like (rough approximate) 830 trillion trillion trillion different Mailinator email addresses. So you have pleanty of latitude to pick a unique one.

   It is obviously not something you would want to use for sensitive emails.

       There are a few limitations on the emails:

  •     Any given mailbox will only hold 10 messages at once.
  • All attachments - pictures, binary files, etc. - are stripped out (you can never catch a virus from an email at Mailinator).
  • Other rejection criteria include email size (max 120k)
  • Too many recipients.

Additionally, there are a variety of other filters that are used to protect us from bad people.  Any email that Mailinator isn't happy with will never make it into the system.

        The name you pick must form a proper email address or the email will never even get as far as Mailinator.  Beyond the normal rules, it limits email names to 25 characters. Other than that, there is no specific word filtering of address names.

   There are a few possible "Alternate Domains".   Some websites simply won't let you sign-up unless you consent to letting them spam you thereafter.  As part of this, they might disallow email addresses like mailinator.com.  To provide further avenues to protect your privacy, Mailinator has many other domains that also point to Mailinator.  Emailing any of those is just the same (as far as mailinator is concerned) as emailing Mailinator itself. Check the front-page on the Mailinator website for some of the alternate domains.

    Also note that you can point your own domains to Mailinator (i.e. specifically, your MX record).  Thus you can have your "own private Mailinator" in that respect.  The mailinator system accepts any email addressed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

    What are "Alternate Inbox Names" ?

    There are 2 ways to get email into any given inbox. When you check an inbox, listed at the top is the Alternate Inbox name. Emailing that alternate name is the same as emailing the regular name of the inbox. For example, the alternate name for "joe" is "M8R-yrtvm01" (all alternate names start with "M8R-").

    Thus, you can email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. OR This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - either way, the email will arrive in the "joe" inbox (and nothing into the M8R-yrtvm01 inbox). What's more, there is no way to guess an an alternate name. If you give out the alternate, only YOU will be able to check the emails because only you know the original inbox name.

    In short, pick yourself a nice, long, and hard-to-guess mailinator name - and then give out the alternate. People can email you but can't read your email !

    There is some OTHER free email service and its MUCH better!

    That's not really a question, but we'll try to answer it anyway. As far as we know, nothing like Mailinator existed before Mailinator (though there are plenty of copy-cats now). We certainly aren't competing with other free anti-spam services - we're all on the same side, remember?. We feel that Mailinator effectively solves one specific part of the spam problem. In the end, use what works best for you. Mailinator works great for us, we use it all the time.

Check your inbox!
Can't think up an Address?

At Mailinator you can use any address that YOU make up! Here's a random one though if you're having trouble thinking of one:

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Email sent to an alternate domain goes to Mailinator too! See the web site (link show above) for more details.

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Geoffrey Chapman

Geoffrey Chapman

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An IT professional with a wide experience of IT systems, specialising in Database Management and Security.

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