Slashdot Mirror

Look here: hdmahrxpqxxhp @ mailinator.com mailbox

It's a mail from some guy who set up a GoogleAd on the contest keyword.

For one-shot subscription signups you're way better off using mailinator anyway.

Well use some other domain then.

Unfortunately, this practice is fairly commmon.
I was at Best Buy the other day, and at their little pavillion/kiosk thingy in the back (by the Geek Squad station), I noticed a poster-sized picture of this strange guy making the "OK" sign around his eye.
I thought...where the hell have I seen that before?
Then it dawned on me: Mailinator....here's the pic in question

Don't waste your gmail address on that: Mailinator.

Simple answer - Mailinator [mailinator.com]. No need to sign up for anything.

Perhaps somewhat offtopic, but you do know about Mailinator? It is a wonderful service for those occasions when you want to register somewhere you do not intend to visit again and have to give a valid email address.

(And no, I am not affiliated to Mailinator in any way.)

Mailinator is your friend.

For those things there is Mailinator.

Throwaway accounts should never be, out of all places, registered on Hotmail.com. They suspend your account if you don't login for 30 days. At least Yahoo!Mail or other free alternatives let you forget the account for few months and not get penalized for it.

For those things there is Mailinator.

Throwaway accounts should never be, out of all places, registered on Hotmail.com. They suspend your account if you don't login for 30 days. At least Yahoo!Mail or other free alternatives let you forget the account for few months and not get penalized for it.

Use Mailinator and avoid the spam in the first place!

When you need a temporary adress for registration, other useful solutions are Mailinator and TrashMail.

Why lie to yahoo when Mailinator doesn't care?

When I sign up for stuff I use this service:

Mailinator.com

Cheers

"unless I'm looking for one of those precious "email validation" messages."

A bit off topic but I found a cool site that handles those email validation messages you need to get once in awhile. It's called mailinator. Anytime you want to register with a site that asks for your email address so they can send you a validation code (and inevitably spam you to death) you can use mailinator's service for free. All you have to do is write bobs_your_uncle@mailinator.com and then you can login into that account at mailinator. All messages received there get deleted in a few minutes and do note that anyone else can access it as well, but it certainly is a good service to handle for that exact case you mention!

-Pat

Thats because you have been both careful and lucky.
Fortunately now, more and more people are using their brains before blindly giving out their personal information.

Within the people in my primary contact list, I cannot name one now who does not run either behind a protected business firewall and mail server, or runs Norton and has updated mail clients. The problems with Windows 98 outlook preview pane are thankfully subsiding for me.

For unknown services which require an email address to signup, I now use a wonderful service called Mailinator which allows you to use and read mail at any [username]@mailinator.com email address. The mail parser is quite simplistic in that it wont display images in mails etc :) its becoming automatic for me to signup using it, and change my details once trust is built up.

Opt-in is a lousy idea. Don't you want to be able to receive legitimate e-mail from people you haven't met yet?

Not really. If people who haven't met me yet want to tell me something there are better methods than e-mail which provide protection against spam. Automated messages and personal messages shouldn't be carried on the same system.

I'd set my email address as opt-in only if it wasn't for the fact that so many places give me no other choice. Slashdot forces me to confirm my email address. Discover cards wants my email address. Wachovia needs my email address. For the latter two I can't even use Mailinator, as then someone could steal all my money from me. And besides, they insist on sending me crap that I'm supposed to keep rather than giving me a standard API into their systems. It's a big mess.

I know you probably already know this, but just in case, the solution many of us use for that exact same problem is a combination of Mailinator and Spamgourmet. Maybe you can still use your Hotmail account in combination with those, but you'll have to check it less and less, so it'd become less of an annoyance...

I wonder how far this will go? What about the free disposable email services? Mailinator or jetable next?

When evaluating services like this, I want to see who's already there. I want to do this without calling attention to myself or anyone else. If I like what I see, then I'll participate further -- fill out a profile, hook up to already-registered friends, tell other people about it, etc. Forcing me to offer up five contacts as tribute violates this principle.

www.mailinator.com

Try Malinator . It works for me.

http://www.mailinator.com

I like Mailinator. It's cool and has a FAQ that's one of the funniest things I've read lately.

I like Mailinator. It's cool and has a FAQ that's one of the funniest things I've read lately.

But this thing is not a worm, but a virus. It can't survive without the naivete of the clueless user. That problem might be solved by providing a leaflet for buyers of new computers, which will contain information such as:

• NEVER open executable attachments, even if they come from people you know.
• NEVER give your email address to sites - use sneakemail or mailinator instead.
• Oh, and use WindowsUpdate and a firewall regularly.

Christ. Stop bitching about the NY Times registration thing. You only have to do it once. Once you're registered, Mozilla, K-Melon, Firebird, Opera, Safari, Omni or whatever else is out there would handle the rest by filling in your user info when you click an NYT link (which cookie expires once a week). You just have to click "OK" to view the articles from that point on.

That wasn't hard, was it?

Afraid to give out your email? No problem. Use Mailinator. Make up a moniker, register, log in, authenticate, and you're done.

It's strikes me odd when people would dedicate their Friday nights to compiling kernels and fucking around with Linux config files, but when it comes to a simple task of registering for a stupid news site, it becomes a problem. Cut it out.

For disposable email accounts (for site registrations etc), take a look at Mailinator. It offers automatically generated mailboxen, which are deleted after a few hours.

Or just use Mailinator.

Tech solutions will beat legal ones in this fight. Check out Mailinator

You should check out one of the free (as in beer) "fake" email services. Take a look at:

Sneakemail Basic account is free, premium service is $2/month. This is a wonderful service where you set up an address that will act as a front door and forward mail to an address you specify. You can have dozens of addresses, each for a specific company. Whenever you like, you can delete the address; no more spam problem.

Mailinator If you ever need a temporary throwaway email address just to sign up for something you're unsure of, use Mailinator. Once you sign up for Mailinator (using your Sneakemail address above ;-) then you pick AnyUserName@mailinator.com, Mailinator will capture the email, and allow you to look at it. I saw this in Cringely's column, and really like it.

Two extremely handy services. I use both quite often!

Ah, but that is what Mailinator is for. It's one of those goofy ideas that amuses me no end and I've actually found useful. If you haven't checked it out, do so. It's really rather interesting.

Also Mailinator.com

The solution: Mailinator

If you don't worship your tinfoil hat, you should check out mailinator.com. You don't need to set anything up, you just check the mailbox that you just made up.

BTW, there's a site called mailinator.com that's very useful when some download page needs an email address.

A friend just showed me this site: http://www.mailinator.com/ if you are tired of spam, you can use that website to receive an email, and you don't have to create any account at all !