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When comparing the many ways to fight spam, creating a temporary email address is by far the best solution.  Gmail, always the innovator, likely has one of the fastest ways to create a disposable email address, but it is likely not the most efficient method for most people.

Let’s say you want to sign up to a website called “SpamCo” but don’t want the spam that is likely to follow.  Well, if your Gmail account is example@gmail.com, simply add a “+” sign to the address, and use this instead: “example+spammerscorp@gmail.com”.  All incoming emails will simply be sent to your original example@gmail.com account.  There is no other step to set up this secondary email address when using Gmail—which makes it practically instantaneous.

Drawbacks…
While the original setup time is minimal, the drawbacks are numerous.  For one, you cannot delete the example+SpamCo@Gmail.com account.  If you do begin recieving spam from Spamco, you must instead create a filter to delete the incoming mail.  For example, you could create a filter that would catch the word “SpamCo” and proceed to automatically forward the mail to a specific folder.  However, the idea of maintaining hundreds of various filters is disconcerting.

Even worse, many websites will not allow a “+” sign when entering an email address, rendering the secondary email “invalid”.

Also, if you can sign up for a website with the “+” sign, you might not be able to confirm your email address as valid.  For example, you sign up for SpamCo using the example+SpamCo@Gmail.com account, SpamCo actually sends the confirmation email to example@Gmail.com, therefore, when you validate the incoming email, SpamCo believes you are emailing from a totally different account, and denies access.

I love the simplicity of setting up secondary Gmail accounts; however, this is probably not the most effective method.  Nevertheless, it’s nice to know it’s there, and it can certainly come in handy from time to time.

As the popular saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch, e.g. you don’t get something for nothing.  Of course, this phrase is applicable to the plethora of “free” information consumed each day via the internet; however, the currency of exchange is not often money, but instead, a barrage of spam and advertising.  I am unsure of the number of websites I have signed up for in order to read one article and never to return, however, I have spent countless hours deleting the spam trail that unavoidably follows.  Sure, a@a.com will work if you need to provide a fake email address for some freeware or to gain quick access to a website, but what if the download or activation link is sent to the provided email address?

If you’re like me, you probably have several functioning email addresses to work around spam, nevertheless, it’s not fun signing into a secondary account to quickly gain access to a third-rate website.  This is the problem Temporaryemail.net hopes to alleviate by providing a fast and disposable email address—without signing up or logging in.  Just visit the site, click the button, and a unique email address is immediately activated.  Use it to download, join, or gain access to any website you don’t want infiltrating your personal email account while keeping spam at bay.

Temporaryemail.net is a great solution, but there are also many others—Mail Plus by Yahoo and Gmail come to mind, and I hope to provide comparisons of these and varying other services in this blog.  If you have any information regarding spam fighting solutions, or just want to say hi, please feel free to drop me a line!