Steve Smith discusses the benefits of using disposable e-mail addresses when explicitly wanting to protect one's identity online, or in any other compromising situations.
Episode #3-35 released on May 25, 2013
Your privacy online is extremely important, and your email address ties you to any web-site you register to, as well, as becoming the weakest link in all security all over the internet. So is there a way to register to web-sites, send e-mails, etc... and not share your actual e-mail address? The answer is yes.
Through the use of temporary email address services, we can register to strange web-sites, download software, etc... without using our actual email address. This minimizes the risk of spam, and you don't become part of a larger database, as well.
The benefits of such temporary email services are that they are for all intensive purposes, disposable. You will incur less spam, therefore save on your own personal bandwidth. These email addresses also make you more anonymous.
There are some misfortunes with these services because these are normally not practical for accounts you wish to keep on web-sites you register where you must be able to access the email in the future for such things as account activation or lost password retrieval. There is also a particular risk due to the fact that these addresses aren't always password protected, some aren't even private because they have a visual RSS feed of all emails coming into those particular services. And lastly, some web-sites explicitly block these kinds of temporary addresses.
With all those great benefits, and misfortunes, should you use such a service? The answer is yes, in fact, I'd like to suggest a few services that may interest you for the foreseeable future. These include Fake Mail Generator, Mint Email, Trash Mail, Throw Away Mail, Guerrilla Mail, Fake Inbox, Dispostable, Mailinator, Jetable, and Trash Can Mail. These services allow you to register to services, wait for a confirmation, and forget about it. No spam will arrive to your own email addresses ever from these services. No registration is required.
The only time you shouldn't use such a service, is for any web-site you wish to register and use often, or for online purchases. Besides that, have fun, and keep your inbox, spam free.
Next week, I'll talk about anonymous online search tools that allow you to search for anything you want, without all the personal tracking involved.
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Host : Steve Smith | Music : Jonny Lee Hart | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Productions