[GLLUG] Disposable E-mail Addresses

Charles Ulrich charles at bityard.net
Fri Jan 4 23:05:30 EST 2013


Hi Chick,

You have a gmail account, which has disposable addresses built-in. Just 
append the '+' character to the username, and then any arbitrary string. 
So mail sent to example+spammington at gmail.com just goes to 
example at gmail.com. The downsides are that it doesn't really "hide" your 
address (someone who knows the "+" trick can strip it out), and also a 
lot of web forms out there don't recognize "+" as a valid email address 
character. (Even though it totally is.) It does work fine with 
craigslist, though. The upshot, however, is that you can filter based on 
the incoming address if some sender gets too spammy. Although GMail is 
very good at filtering spam already.

Craigslist and other service providers are going to block email 
anonymizers as well as they can because they are a major source of spam. 
So in order to cover your bases, you'll have to have a few different 
accounts set up, and expect that each one will go away at some point.

Another alternative is paying for email hosting with your own domain. 
There are probably good email hosting solutions out there, but it's also 
possible these days to just get a cheap hosted cpanel account where you 
can add/delete email accounts at will.

I have a $15/month VPS that I run Postfix on. I have it configured to 
use "." as the username separator instead of "+". This passes all the 
web form validation checks and allows me to filter mail based on the 
incoming address:

charles.dont.spam.me.please.please.please at bityard.net

On 01/04/2013 10:43 PM, Chick Tower wrote:
> I've been using SpamGourmet (http://www.spamgourmet.com) for a few years
> now for disposable e-mail addresses, and I really like it.  It's
> flexible, easy to use, and free.  However, the last month or so the
> messages I've sent using disposable addresses to Craigslist for-sale ads
> haven't been delivered.  I tried another site, with the same result, so
> it looks like something Craigslist changed.  In the process of looking
> for another provider that would let me send anonymous e-mail messages, I
> found many providers that don't quite do what I need, but some that do.
>
> At last night's meeting, Ben mentioned that he uses some addresses as
> "throw-away" addresses, but they're permanent.  Since what he wants is
> disposable addresses, I thought there are probably others who could use
> them, so here are some sites I've found.
>
> If you don't know what a disposable e-mail address is, or why they are
> useful, see this article.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_email_address
>
> Here is a page on the Open Directory Project that lists several, with
> brief descriptions.  To find out what each one actually does, and if it
> meets your needs, you'll have to visit the sites.
>
>> http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/E-mail/Spam/Preventing/Temporary_Addresses/
>>
>
> This one looks pretty full-featured, but it's not free.
>
> http://www.spamex.com/
>
> You can find lots of other sites via your favorite search engine.  I was
> surprised at how many there are, and how many that look good in the
> results are no longer around.



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