Temporary e-Mail Address – What are they?

Disposable email account also known as a temporary email address is an email account that you can create to fulfill a temporary need that may contain potential risks. If the temporary email gets compromised in any way or if it is abused by a third party, you can simply dispose of it to avoid any problems.

Some of the popular temporary email services used today are,

• Guerrillamail
• Mytrashmail
• Mailinator
• MailExpire

If there is a site you want to join and it’s asking for your email account, if you want to avoid getting hundreds of spam mails in your real account every day, you can set up a temporary email to use in such situations. So when you use a disposable account to sign up for a particular website, you are using an alias of your real email account. Every such alias is made specifically for a single mailing list or site which then gets associated with the disposable email account. Due to this when you get spam in your mail, you will know exactly what its source was.

There are many benefits to having a temporary email like the above mentioned protection of spam and protection from senseless information mails like ones containing hoaxes and spoofs. You don’t need to sign up or register anywhere to obtain one. Another great advantage is that your temporary email will automatically expire after a certain time period. This process has a lot of clarity involved and thankfully no hindrances.

But there are certain downsides as well. Some forums on the internet detest temporary emails as they create certain difficulties for forums to maintain control of their members. They also conceal the identity of the members which lead to problems when that particular member causes a problem. And so any member who was previously banned from a particular forum for spamming or trolling can easily make a temporary email and get in again. Many such sites are considering banning DEA’s due to this particular problem.

Overall a temporary email is quite a boon that can protect your real account and have it uncluttered. Of course this function shouldn’t be used for any malicious purposes and should be used responsibly. With great power comes great responsibility.

Post your comments below 🙂