Easy Throw-Away Email Addresses

netbuzz writes, "A fellow teaching himself Seam has come up with a clever Web app called 10 Minute Mail. It gives you a valid e-mail address — instantly — for use in registering at Web sites. Ten minutes later (more if you ask), it's gone. You can read mail and reply to it from the page where you create the throw-away address. Limited utility, yes, but easy and free."

Comments

Vs. Mailinator

[P(0)(!P(k) P(k 1))]

I was curious as to how TMM stacked up against mailinator, my anonymous email of choice; mailinator has a time-limit of several hours, and its interface is slightly more elegant.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[Anonymous Coward]

Mailinator is a great and possibly better alternative to TMM. It appears that the email address TMM generates does expire in such a way that it rejects email to the address you are given after a period of time (10 minutes). With mailinator, the email address never expires, but mail that is delivered tends to be purged after a few hours. Mailinator works so well that I have found some sites don't let you use mailinator addresses in the sign up process. Luckily they have set up alternative domains that point their mail to mailinator's servers allowing you to use alternative domain names in your temporarily email address.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[plover]

I've been using Mailinator for throw-away web page signups for years, but I use Sneakemail for the purchasing sites where I'd like to be notified about shipments, etc.

I have to say I like the idea of a 10 minute window. Several hours means I can't really use it to have them send me passwords, as I frequently have name collisions at Mailinator.

In the same vein, I dislike the lack of a "roll-your-own" email address that Mailinator offers. With Mailinator, I can simply type john@mailinator.com and not worry about visiting Mailinator's site first. With TMM, I have to hit their site to get the randomly generated mail40367@10minutemail.com address (and yes, they're slashdotted at the moment.)

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot send emails through mailinator, anonymous mailing isn't part of their service offering. It is designed strictly for recieving email you don't want.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[Khabok]

How about Vs. GMail? Ever heard of plus-addressing? I've been using it lately with great results.

myemail+anythingelse@gmail.com always goes straight to myemail@gmail.com, BUT with a distinct TO address. That way you know which service sold you to spammers, and you can prop up a filter to faithfully dispose of them.

Of course, like any of these services, it only works until the big baddies find out...

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[whoever57]

How about Vs. GMail? Ever heard of plus-addressing? I've been using it lately with great results.
myemail+anythingelse@gmail.com always goes straight to myemail@gmail.com, BUT with a distinct TO address.

I also use this whenever possible. Unfortunately, many web developers think that a "+" in an email address is not valid, even if used before the "@". Or maybe they are too lazy to develop rules that apply different checks for the part before the "@" and the part after, or whatever. The unfortunate fact is that many website registration systems simply won't accept emails like "myemail+anythingelse@gmail.com".

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[spacecowboy420]

My favorite is to just have a catchall on my domain. Then when I signup for something, I use a descriptive address plus my domain. This allows me to not only get all the mail, I know who I gave it to, and who is selling/spamming. If they start to spam, I just turn it off or dev/null all mail to that address.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[Jaime2]

No one would ever figure out to strip everything after the plus before selling it to spammers. That would be far too difficult and wouldn't work for a large number of accounts.

The + address just lets you catch the ones that are accidentally leaking your address. Anyone being aggressive will have your real address. That way you won't have any of the spam that is periferally related to things that you are actually interested in, but you will get tons of Viagra and porn spam. Yay!!!

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[SeaFox]

It is designed strictly for recieving email you don't want.

I know that description is correct, but it just reads really funny.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[Teppic_52]

That's what I do, works better if you add the aliases instead of using catch all though, then you don't get the 'Returned Mail' spam too.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[zollman]

It gets worse. Recently a spammer used my domain as their From address, with a randomly generated username part.

For the three days the spam went on, I was getting upwards of 100 emails an hour, mostly bounces and out-of-office messages. Very hard to separate out the real messages.

Be careful with the catchall, and make sure you've got a separate mailbox for important stuff.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[matthewcraig]

Caution! I tried this many years ago, on a suggestion from a slashdot comment, no less. Feeling impervious to spam, I used descriptive email addresses + my domain on web forms everywhere. It wasn't long before the spam started piling up... big time. 100s of spam messages a day, including dictionary attacks against the domain. I started using spam-assassin tools. The tools worked well, blocking ~95% of the spam, however, by that time I was approaching 1000 spam messages a day. I was still getting ~50 spam messages each day... and rising. Eventually, the domain was getting hit with nearly 1500 spam messages a day, and I shut down my mail server service. For every 1 legitimate email, I was deleting over 100 spam messages. It has been down for a year, and I can only wonder if the endless waves of spam are attacking it. Thankfully, I was using co-located server hosting, so my personal network was not effected.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[wayneo13]

Don't you mean to defeat client-side checking?

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[1point618]

This is very true, and the trick I use to get around it is the fact that gmail treats foobar@gmail.com the same as foo.bar@gmail.com or f.o.o.b.a.r@gmail.com. For sites I don't trust completely and who insist that + isn't valid, I use a different dot pattern, and if I start getting junk, I set up a filter. Works great.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[BrynM]

Eventually, the domain was getting hit with nearly 1500 spam messages a day, and I shut down my mail server service.

Greylisting could clear that up in a jiffy. My server was getting a few thousand spams a day (peaked at over 2000 in an hour at one point). It was getting so that the machine was constanly churning spamassassin and not much else could get CPU. Worse: my filters/learning were getting poisoned. I installed greylisting and the problems all went away. If you aren't running your server ask your provider for it. Most server apps have a plugin or something similar for it nowadays.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[plover]

Your name was too long. Mailinator has a length limit.

BTW, your Aunt Salley called, and she sounded right pissed.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[dcam]

And this is just another example of how spam breaks email.

The immediate response to this (for me) was to train my spam filter junk bounces. Which means there is no way to find out if an email arrived at its destination.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[mattwarden]

This is what I do, and it worked great until spammers and worms started sending emails to random usernames at my domain, e.g. john@mydomain.com (my name ain't john), sue@mydomain.com (ain't sue either), etc.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[moresheth]

This happened to me as well.

I ended up setting up a forward for all mail that didn't specifically have a known account. So, I just made the *@mydomain.com to go to mybounces@hotmail.com at the DNS (zoneedit.com).

I haven't checked that account in a long time, so I'm not sure if it's still being used for spam reply addresses.

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[MichaelSmith]

They must use write only memory

Re:Vs. Mailinator

[dekkerdreyer]

Throw an SPF entry in your DNS zone record, that helps keep spammers from using your domain as a FROM address. Worked for one of my domains.

Sounds a lot like

[tessaiga]

what Mailinator has been providing for years.

I just use spam.la

[__aavhli5779]

There's no privacy (everyone can view everyone else's mail) but it's perfect for throwaway registrations where your only concern is reading whatever content some site has to offer.

Re:I just use spam.la

[gilesparsons]

there is an odd privacy from spam.la, the privacy of crowds, much as there is a privacy you get from being on cctv at every step in a crowded city of millions that you do not get from being in a village. any message sent can be read by anyone; so although everyone can read your email, because it could be sent to anybody, it is, in a different way, private.

it is very exciting that at the same time london police want microphones on street corners to complement cctv, i can set up an anonymous email address within seconds. technology does not necessarily make lives less private; it just changes the rules of the game.

How is this better than dodgeit.com?

[hemp]

Dodgeit.com is free and allows to you to specify any email address@dodgeit.com and read the emails that arrive.
http://www.dodgeit.com/

What's the point?

[DoorFrame]

What's the point of having an email address that's only around for a few minutes when you could just use a single throwaway email address for all of your registration needs. It doesn't expire, but since you only use it for registrations, it doesn't matter how much spam/cruft it accumulates.

Re:What's the point?

[krotkruton]

Here's one point. Let's assume you use one email address for all of your registration needs, including forums (and shopping if you really want to drive this point home). Over time, that email address will be linked to a variety of sites, which together can be used to identify you. Of course, depending on how you use the sites connected to the email address, there may be nothing that can be used to get your actual identity or you may have used your name on a couple which leads people to you (or you might use your credit card on a shopping site). Now you, or your identity depending on how you want to look at it, is linked to that email. This probably isn't a big deal for most people. Now let's pretend you want to sign up on an Anarchists website, which is something I wouldn't recommend in the US right now, so now that email is linked to you and linked to anarchy. That might not be something you want. That example doesn't work for you? How about signing up for a porn site that requires email but no credit card? What about a torrent site? An email address that lasts only 10-minutes should make it harder for people to link things that you do back to you.

(Before anyone jumps down my throat, I said it "should make it harder" not impossible, and I didn't say that it makes it hard because I don't know the difficulty of doing such a thing. I just said it would be harder than using one email address for everything.)

Re:What's the point?

[wowbagger]

If the site needs to mail you something to complete the registration, you have to be able to read the email address - and having one address that collects a ton of crap makes it hard to read the email address and get that one mail you care about to complete the registration.

Yes, if the site wants an email address, but you don't need to receive any emails from the site to continue, give it "i_dont_want_spam@localhost", or "i_dont_want_spam@example.org"

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Crowhead]

What's the point of having an email address that's only around for a few minutes when you could just use a single throwaway email address for all of your registration needs.

One throwaway is the best way to go. What if you forget your password for one of the many sites you registered at? The 'I lost my password' function is worthless if there is no longer an address to retrieve it at.

This won't stop my mom from sending me e-postcards

[el QuesoGrande]

Most of the people I know already keep a secondary address on gmail/hotmail, etc for this purpose.

This works, but things such as invites, forwards, e-cards that your friends send you with good intentions still mess things up. I had a good clean 3-year run with my last address, but lately it's just spiraled out of control.

pr0n

[User 956]

A fellow teaching himself Seam has come up with a clever Web app called 10 Minute Mail

Their slogan... "JBoss Seam: For when you need more seam in your web experience."

Dodgeit.com does the same thing

[tokengeekgrrl]

Receive only free email that automatically gets deleted every 7 days unless you make a donation, then you get to password protect and own the email address (as I do).

http://dodgeit.com/faq.html

- tokengeekgrrl

Just buy a domain.

[Ikeya]

I have my own domain and I can create an unlimited number of throwaway addresses. If they behave, I keep it active. If it starts getting spam, I know which business I can't trust and I direct it to /dev/null/

For example, if I were to register with slashdot, I could just use slashdot@mydomain.com

I can keep it around for as short or as long as I want.

Re:Just buy a domain.

[Ant P.]

And you don't even need a domain - GMail lets you use +slashdot@gmail for the same effect.

Re:Just buy a domain.

[Zarel]

The problem with that strategy is that sooner or later, companies will realize that particular feature of GMail, remove everything between the + and the @, and bam! It doesn't work any more.

Re:Just buy a domain.

[Dark Coder]

NOT SO!!!

If the mail provider allows account holder to just only REJECT the localname having NO TAG (the beginning part of the email up to the '+' or '-' sign) so that only

joe@doe.com

gets rejected...

BAM!

Instant selective email address to the following:

• joe+friends@doe.com
  
• joe+family@doe.com
  
• joe+slashdot@doe.com
  
• joe+spammer@doe.com

This forces the spammers to even perform MORE dictionary attacks against a SINGLE email address. The longer the +tag, the harder the guessing attack will succeed!.

Re:Just buy a domain.

[Evro]

Most email verification functions consider + an illegal character; quite annoying for the above use. You can also intersperse '.' in your gmail username wherever you want; that does work everywhere.

Allows more spambotting

[madhatter256]

Won't this actually help spammers? Email addresses that are thrown away thus they can't be completely stopped spamming a specific forum or inboxes.

Wow, even on Slashdot

[Bemmu]

This service shows how effectively promoting your service can really make a difference. While Mailinator has been around for a long time, somehow this 10minutemail has managed to get lots of exposure. I wonder did they really get all these mentions around the net just organically, or was there heavy promotion involved? If the success came organically, perhaps it's because 10minutemail is easier to understand. Just from the domain name it's easy to guess what the service is for.

Unnescessary but nice with more options

[Kattspya]

I know of at least two different sites which give out disposable e-mail addresses so I don't really understand why this is newsworthy.

http://www.spamgourmet.com/
You create an account and spamgourmet will bounce the mail to you. The syntax is: [word].[number of mails].[username]@spamgourmet.com. When the alloted number of e-mails has been used the mails will bounce unless you allow more through.

http://www.mailinator.com/
You just make up a string of letters and use those letters to view the account at mailinator. This is a truly disposable mail address since the inbox is open to anyone who chooses to look at the account. If the information is semiimportant you should choose a pretty random mail address.

Re:Unnescessary but nice with more options

[BenFranske]

Yep, I was going to point out that Spam Gourmet has been doing this for years. Granted this is a different slat where the addresses expire in some period of time instead of some number of messages but they are roughly equivalent.

Re:Unnescessary but nice with more options

[Jugalator]

Yeah, I really like SpamGourmet's twist on this problem...

It's very convenient to use your regular mail client to read your "risky" mail, but still restrict it to e.g 3 mails for account verification.

There's an extra curiosity with it as well -- it can be used to detect which sites sell your address. Set it to cap at 5 mails, and if it keeps trickling in beyond the 1-2 mails, you know exactly which company originally sold it.

Re:Unnescessary but nice with more options

[Macgyver7017]

Actually, spamgourmet doesn't bounce the messages once the address expires, it just silently discards them. This is nice since it doesn't tip off the site that your address was/is invalid.
-Jon

Other spam-fighting mail services

[overbored]

First, there are tons of other services that do this already. However, I personally am not very interested in expiring addresses; I frequently want to keep receiving mail at that address into the future (and some services simply don't allow you to update your email address, in which case you're screwed).

Up until last year I've been using the popular (and open-source) Spamgourmet. It caps you at a max of 20 messages, though, so if you want to keep receiving mail at that address, you need to continually reset the message count (and a burst of mail exceeding the limit will result in lost messages). Furthermore, a lot of spammers have been targeting it lately, generating email address like blah1.yourusername@spamgourmet.com or blah2.yourusername@spamgourmet.com. Yes, you can solve this by requiring watchwords, but then you need to remember to add that substring into all your future email addresses.

Another one that I've been using a bunch is mailnull.com, which lets you explicitly create addresses in the form of yourusername.ebay@mailnull.com. A disadvantage is that you cannot use it as an outgoing proxy for sending mail.

Finally, there's sneakemail.com, which is like mailnull, except you work with completely mangled names (aw4jo48esaf9@sneakemail.com), and it does proxy outgoing mail (so I use it when signing up for things where I may want to reply, i.e. mailing lists). At first, the sneakemail site is a complete turn-off, but the service is probably the closest to what I'd want to use.

Re:Other spam-fighting mail services

[$pace6host]

Finally, there's sneakemail.com, which is like mailnull, except you work with completely mangled names (aw4jo48esaf9@sneakemail.com), and it does proxy outgoing mail (so I use it when signing up for things where I may want to reply, i.e. mailing lists). At first, the sneakemail site is a complete turn-off, but the service is probably the closest to what I'd want to use.

I used sneakemail for free for years - the web interface is ugly, but I only use it for a few seconds, and you can probably do 99% of your activity from the login page (create a new address or find an existing one). I finally started paying for the service (heh, after a few years and a few hundred disposable addresses, I figured I'd try the pay features) and now I get the ability to create intelligible throwaways with a keyword. You give sneakemail a keyword (first come, first served, like logins) and all you have to do from then on is send email to <arbitrary>-keyword@sneakemail.com (e.g. slashdot-keyword@sneakemail.com), and it will create the email address on the fly when the first message is received. Free accounts have a fairly low bandwidth cap, though I suppose you could create several of them if you really wanted to. I haven't hit the cap on the pay account yet. Another cool feature I use sometimes (and it's available in the free account) is to have sneakemail forward the inbound messages to multiple addresses (like when I'm looking for an important message, and I don't know if it will come when I'm at work, where they won't let me access my home email, or at home, where I can't get to my work email).

Spamgourmet

[neosake]

I personally find Spamgourmet to be more interesting...

You sign up (yeah, I know, you have to trust them) and give out email addresses like
madeupkeyword.X.yourusername@spamgourmet.org
where X is the number of messages (up to 20) that you want to allow for a particular word. Spamgourmet forwards X number of messages to your email, and then quietly destroys any further messages.

Re:Spamgourmet

[gringer]

I find spamgourmet useful for other additional reasons:

1. Gives you a list of keywords that you've used previously
2. If people appear to know your system for choosing address names, you can change it
3. You can send email from one of the disposable addresses
4. You can use other domain names as well (e.g. neverbox.com)

A good service, provided that you're willing to trust giving them one of your current email addresses.
http://www.spamgourmet.com/disposableemail.pl?prin tpage=faq.html

yet another recommend: bugmenot.com

[muel]

http://www.bugmenot.com/ -- for when you need a username/pass to log into a particular free site (New York Times, AllMusic, etc.) but don't want to bother registering. Assumedly, this site will knock out half of your reasons to use these various quickie e-mail services. Enjoy!

Banned

[Dan East]

Thanks for the heads up slashdot - I've updated my forums' email ban list. It's joined the likes of mailinator.com and its alias domains (fakeinformation.com and sogetthis.com).

Dan East

Re:Banned

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go Danny Boy, chew on this. Today's domain is ajaxislame.com. Be sure to check every other day.

2Prong Mailinator 10 Minute Mail

[shawnmchorse]

I use these throwaway e-mail addresses quite a lot in testing various web applications (which often require unique e-mail addresses for each registration or whatever). A lot of people have already mentioned Mailinator, so I'll also mention 2Prong. I came across it one day when Mailinator was down for whatever reason. It has a couple of things in its favor. First, it only uses a domain for two days before moving on to a different domain for throwaway e-mail addresses. So the likelihood of you ever finding the domain blocked is essentially nil. Second, it works completely automatically. All you do is copy/paste the e-mail address, use it, and then the page auto-refreshes when it gets the confirmation e-mail or whatever it is you're looking for. Nice and clean.

Direct Link to the site

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to go to the site directly, go here:

10MinuteMail.com

They will get banned just like bugmenot

[VGfort]

It will just be a matter of time before people that write forms make these email addresses not available to be registered with. I've seen some apps that already block some of the other fake email generators.

Re:Brick stores need your email address!

[wiredlogic]

Yahoo provides throwaway addresses (addressguard) to paying subscribers. They last indefinitely and provide useful delivery options. I use this feature for sites I don't trust and for usenet to make it easier to sort out their spam. The old Yahoo mail interface would color code mail sent to different addressguard adresses. This isn't yet in the new interface unfortunately.

Let me add another suggestion:

[StarfishOne]

http://www.mytrashmail.com/

Very handy temporary email accounts.

Another list

[h3]

Here's another list:

http://www.listible.com/list/disposable-email-serv ices

I also don't know why this 10minutemail site is getting the attention it is. I like jetable and shortmail myself (option to forward).

Yahoo has been doing this for years

[jamonterrell]

At least on my SBC Yahoo account I've been able to do so... you click the button and it creates a fake e-mail address that forwards to your real one and lets you send on behalf of it.. just delete it when you're done.

Grammatical number and localizability

[tepples]

how hard is it to write a few extra lines of code that append an "s" to the word "message" only if you have MORE than one message???

This can be very hard if you want to expand your market beyond anglophone world, especially to users who speak languages that have ways of forming plurals other than something like the s-suffixation used in English. For instance, some nouns in English, German, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sindarin use what has been called an infix or a simulfix: goose > geese. Worse, languages may have more than two categories of grammatical number. Categories attested in some languages other than English include nullar, dual, paucal, and distributive plural.

Gmail, + - and how to use related addy's forever.

[arete]

Mod parent up - the "+" is quite unreliable. qmail uses a "-" for the mostly-same purpose.

For those who think this strategy well-and-truly evaporates when companies realize it, think again.

Let me back up a step: There are three reasons to use such a strategy: Tracking (eg, to prevent them realizing that the same person registered at two sites when they control both) spam ( to prevent spam) and spam-tracking (to track who SENT you spam.)

The tracking requirement is only met with very unique addresses - ideally at different such services from different IPs, perhaps using TOR - or using TOR sometimes. Gmail w/ plus isn't really good enough for this if companies figure it out, but it isn't really good enough anyway, personally.

The other two requirements it IS good enough for. Even if spam companies figure out to strip back to the plus, that only gives them access to the main account. Since the main account isn't secret, simply don't use it as your "private" account - let it get filtered like all the other semi-spam. If you want some mail to have a "nospam" priority do something like "me+secretworkemail@gmail.com" where you're ADDING more/different stuff after the plus.

Re:Vs. Mailinator BEWARE + HELP!

[andyatkinson]

BEWARE of the "+" addressing of Gmail feature. I signed up for a MySpace account (bad idea) with my email "+signup" so I could immediately send all the ensuing crap to the garbage. A month later when I went to delete my MySpace account, they informed me they would send send me an email to confirm my delete. After doing this about 10 times, I realized I was never going to get the mail and I wondered why. I DUG IN a little and guess what I found out? ....there stupid code was sending an email to "myemail signup@gmail.com"!! A white space character! So my conclusion was that when I registered, their client side string validation parsed out the "+" character and they stored my email in the database as "myemail signup@gmail.com" which of course is not valid. After about 40 million emails to MySpace explaining this I've given up on canceling my account and settled for obfuscation.

BEWARE: bonehead sites might parse out the plus sign
HELP: Anyone know any way I can get MySpace to delete my account? (I've tried changing my email address but guess what: you have to confirm it by email to your original address first!)

BAAAGGGHHH!

Re:Vs. Mailinator BEWARE + HELP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Change your profile picture to a picture of a penis. In my experience, your account will be deleted within 48 hours.

Craigslist...

[Evro]

I just use Craigslist. Create a fake ad looking to buy a 2007 BMW for $100, Craigslist issues you an anon redirect email address, expires after a couple of weeks. Voila.

Hmm, actually gmail does allow this

[xant]

Gmail lets you filter on basically anything you want. To implement the GP's suggestion, you would:

Give out your "real people" email address as xant+hello@gmail.com

Give out your "websites" email address as xant+thinkgeek_is_a_damn_spammer@gmail.com (for example)

Set gmail to allow xant+hello to pass through the Inbox.

Set gmail to drop xant@gmail.com and xant+*@gmail.com into the spambox.

Mailing lists, too

[xant]

It occurs to me that you could even have a REALLY public email address that passed through gmail's filters properly.

The problem I have in mind is that I participate in (not just lurk on) several mailing lists. When I post, my email address is out there for spammers to find, eventually: gmane.org, among others, is a great place to harvest emails. What can I do about this? I actually want to get email on that address (the list itself) but I don't want spam to get through.

The solution:

- implement the post I just made, above.

- Sign up on the mailing list as xant+mailinglist@gmail.com (you may want to get more specific about which mailing list, but it's not really necessary)

- Set gmail to keep (or label and move) email matching To:xant+mailinglist@gmail.com AND From:(the real mailing list address)

- Set gmail to spambucket To:xant+mailinglist@gmail.com that isn't from the real mailing list.

True, it's possible to for a spammer to forge the From address, but that doesn't seem to happen very often. At least, in the lists where I participate.

Well that sucks.

[raehl]

It is designed strictly for recieving email you don't want.

Is there any service strictly designed for not receiving the email I don't want?

Re:Well that sucks.

[Firehed]

For $10 plus travel expenses, I'll come down to your house and yank the cord associated with your internet connection. I think that should take care of the problem fairly well. No promises on receiving the mail you do want though.

Re:Well that sucks.

[ThJ]

On a site I run, we've had constant problems with saboteurs using these kind of services for creating accounts in order to spam some paint chat rooms we've set up. We've been forced to restrict access to new users, and other measures. To sum it up: It's good that e-mail addresses are easy to create, but it's bad that e-mail addresses are easy to create.

Firefox extension

[UrKHeH]

I wonder why nobody mentioned the following Firefox extension: Temporary inbox (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2650/). It allows to work with disposable emails in one mouse click from the toolbar (well, maybe, two: one for email generation and one for checking).

When I feel bored

[goldcd]

I just log into mailinator with random usernames - always fun to see what people signed up to without wanting to leave an email trail.

Spamhole

[tsunamiiii]

Or you could use spamhole who came up with this idea years ago and not download anything and setup is only about 1 min rahter then 10.