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Review: http://email.about.com/cs/dispaddrrevs/tp/disposab le.htm

Personally, I use http://www.emailias.com/, which has worked great for me. It also lets me use my own domains, and seems to have just about all the other options others are mentioning.

What do they block? It would hardly be possible to block people using their own domains - there are so many different e-mail services that they cannot be sure whethere it is a domain of an e-mail service or someone's own domain, and they hardly want to lose customers who are not able to register.

Now, as soon as you can use your own domain, you can track them. Maybe they block amazon@..., but you can track them with any string. It would be much better to use a more complicated e-mail address, anyway, otherwise you never know if you get spam because Amazon sold your address or because of a dictionary attack - it could even be a joe job, an enemy of Amazon sends lots of spam to amazon@ at many domains, and many people who use that system for tracking will think it's Amazon's fault.
Of course, if you use something more complex than just the name of the company, you have to administrate a list of e-mail addresses with data about who you gave them. Therefore, I think it is easier to use services like Sneakemail or emailias, there you can create as many e-mail addresses as you want (at their domain, not your own), and there are easy web interfaces to administrate the aliases, the e-mails will be tagged when forwarded to your address and there are lots of options.

But if you don't want to use such a service and have domains of your own, I recommend to attach at least some random string to the addresses, e.g. to use guo89wz_amazon@..., guo89wz_companyx@, guo89wz_companyy@... (to make it easier to remember, it can always be the same string). That way, you can at least assume that something went wrong at the company in question (selling the address or they were hacked) and dictionary attacks are not likely (of course, those of companyx with which you registered could guess the alias you have for companyy - so, it's still a bit problematic, using real random strings would be better, and services like the ones mentioned above facilitate this).

from the inevitable spam people get when they like, actually use their real info when registering.

I don't think there are many newspapers that send spam to the addresses with which people register. Certainly, well-known newspapers, such as New York Times or Washington Post don't. I never use fake addresses, I always use emailias addresses, always a new one every time, so I would know who has abused the address. I have never received spam to such addresses used for registering at newspaper or other similar websites.

Ummm, have you tried Disposable Email Addresses? They can do most of what you're talking about, including many-many addresses and changing your replies back into the original address.

Maybe I have overlooked something in the grandparent post, but I think disposable e-mail addresses like the ones with Emailias can not only do most, but all of what is described there, and the number of aliases is not limited.

I have got used to the practice that giving people an e-mail address of mine or writing e-mails to people I don't know entails this little extra-step of creating an alias first. It's done in a few seconds, and I find it much better than always having to consider whether people, websites or organizations are trustworthy enough to receive my e-mail address. Even if it's legitimate mail, I like being able to see where people got an e-mail address of mine from, that would not be possible if I always used the same address instead of the aliases.

Ummm, have you tried Disposable Email Addresses? They can do most of what you're talking about, including many-many addresses and changing your replies back into the original address. I use and prefer Emailias, but there are several around:

Emailias Sneakemail Spamex

...The trick is to never silently discard an email. It's much better to send a friendly error message...

I have direct experience with this gained from the past few weeks of viruses. I run a disposable email address service which includes virus filtering on all emails. The latest batch of viruses are sending out spams to addresses to our domain (as well as other companies and domains). As required for really "good" spam, the "From:" addresses are being being spoofed.

My point here is that I had the "friendly error message" enabled, saying something like "Hey, you sent a virus and you may want to check your computer." Unfortunately, there was probably such an abundance of these unsolicited email replies (i.e. those who received these notices were the spoofed folks who didn't actually send the email) who in turn submitted the emails to SpamCop. Disabling the "nice notice" feature has brought us back into compliance, as it turned-out it the notices just really weren't helping.

This is just one example of how trying to be helpful ends-up getting ourselves in trouble. Thanks a bunch, spammers! It is *very nice* though, to watch the virus log tick-away each time it snags a virus, though. Other ISP-types should really be doing the same.

I love the cube creativity. I expressed such "creativity" twice at my previous employer...though the "previous-ness" has nothing to do with my cube creativity.

This is all true, as I have MPEG movies of both of these. If someone wants a copy, I'm happy to share, just email it to me at cubicoasters_on_slashdot@emailias.com. If anyone has some bandwidth and wants to host them, I'd be very happy to forward them to you, too.

Cubi-coaster 1997: Christmas 1997, I converted my cubicle into a "ball and gutter" kinetic energy machine. Basically, it's a small version of the contraptions you would find in a good science museum or in a progressive airport or mall (for entertaining the public). It started with a slingshot of a small plastic ball across the cubicle into a funnel made of paper that led to the other gutters (made of paper, tape, paperclips)...through a loop-the-loop, and down into a trashcan. But this was no ordinary trashcan. I had rigged it as a "triggered catapult" (I kid you not!) to throw the ball back up into the original funnel across the cube one more time. It only made two laps because I had to re-cock the trashcan catapult.

Cubi-coaster 1998: Christmas 1998, I created a motorized version using several pingpong balls. Using a desktop fan and removing the blade, I created a "chairlift" with fishing line and paperclips (for the "chairs"). The balls would be lifted out of a paper tube and dropped into a clear plastic funnel (made of overhead transparencies and tape) near the ceiling. It could then go one of two ways through clear plastic tubes, across highly-tensioned parallel "rails" of fishline, and over a couple of other pendulum-like devices. This was perpetual, thanks to the motor/fan.

...

This was a lot of fun and sure drew a lot of visitors. Friends commented that for the "next year" that I'd either have to expand to "outside the building" or would have to quit work...I chose the latter.

Happy to share...both then and now! Happy Holidays!

Of course, the average windows user does not have his or her own domain, but I think services like Emailias, Sneakemail, SpamEx or SpamMotel are in principle suited for the masses. It's true that they are not very known, and most people seem to take it for granted that one has a limited and relatively small number of e-mail addresses, the idea to create a new address for every new contact (with a few mouse clicks) seems strange to them. I think that can change when mainstream e-mail providers (Hotmail, AOL, GMX etc) offer disposable e-mail addresses.
So, if they are serious about preventing spamming, these large mainstream mail providers should acquire a few hundred domains and let people create additional addresses for their existing accounts in an easy way on the web interface. That would be relatively easy to do.

• Spam Gourmet
• Spamex
• Sneakemail
• Mailsehll
• Emailias

Briefly, I'll explain how they work in theory. After signing up with a disposable email service, they give you a disposable email address that you can, for example, enter into forms. Mail sent to that disposable email address gets automatically forwarded to your email account of choice. But here's where they supposedly come in handy. You can sign up for a different disposable email address everytime you fill in a web form. If you start getting spam, you can look at the disposable email address the spam was sent to and you can do 2 things: (1) cancel the disposable email address so you no longer get spam sent to that address; and (2) you know who gave out your disposable address and you can take whatever action you deem appropriate.

This seems like a cool product, in theory, but I haven't seen anyone with real world experience with these services. If anyone here can describe their experiences, it would be greatly appreciated.

In my view, disposable e-mail addresses with systems like mailshell are definitely the best solution, I find the little additional work of getting a new address is really worth it. There are quite a number of such services, a few more links:
Sneakemail, the oldest one of these system - there is still a free version (with limited mail size)
emailias.com, I find it very convenient, a lot of options (19.95$/year)
Spamex, a similar service ($9.95/year)
Spamgourmet, a slightly unusual, but interesting system, free
These services are quite sophisticated, with most of them you can reply to mails in any mail client without giving away the real address because the reply-to address is replaced and the answer will first go to the DEA, where it recieves the appropriate from-address; with emailias and others you can forward different alias addresses to different real addresses, ...
More information: PC Magazine article about DEA system with reviews

If it is just a ploy to get addresses, avoid the trap by using a DEA (disposable email address); emailias.com, sneakemail, spamex, etc.

Emailias has a free trial membership (which will come in nicely this online holiday shopping season), plus:

-Nice and clean with no banner ads or pr0n ads.

-Automatically remembers who you're giving the "emailias" to.

-Remembers & reminds me if I revisit the site.

-Easy to delete the emailias (optional header added to email).

-Handles multiple real (my) addresses.

-Many advanced extras.

Too easy to use...I'm hooked!