Guerrilla Mail: Create & Use Temporary, Anonymous Email Addresses
Many services and web apps require you to sign up with a valid email address, and they usually check that by sending a verification email to your specified address, which, in turn, might contain a link that you need to visit for the sign up process to complete. While this seems authentic on the service’s part, most users feel uncomfortable in doing so because of the resultant plethora of spam and promotional emails that bombard your inbox. Guerrilla Mail is a web app that can solve your problem by creating a temporary email address. You can use these to receive verification and configuration emails, validate your address and rest assured that none of your personal details will be compromised as the app will discard your email address after one hour (default setting).
Every time you visit the website, it will automatically assign a random, @sharklasers.com email address that you can use for one hour. The email address will automatically expire after 60 minutes, during which you can read all emails received on this address. The one-hour limit can easily be increased using the Extend button to add an extra hour.
Once you’re done with signing up or accessing any website content, all you need to do is use the Forget Me button to remove your temporary inbox completely from Guerrilla Mail.
To check if your email address is functioning properly, you can send an email to it and check your inbox.
There are quite a few services available that provide you throwaway accounts so you can avoid spams and Nigerian princes but what Guerilla Mail does is give you a temporary email address where you can actually receive and read emails. For quick sign up or suspicious services that mandate you create an account with them, this service is a great way to avoid junk mail. You will need to be careful about which type of service you sign up for using Guerilla Mail since some services email you continuously and suspend your account if the emails keep bouncing back. For web services that you think you would need to use more than once, particularly after large time gaps, you might want to consider making a throwaway email address. For services you are 100% sure you will never use again, Guerilla Mail is perfect. It is a fast, efficient and handy web app for situations where you want to keep your personal email private. It requires no sign up whatsoever, and you don’t need to give any personal details, saving time and avoiding frustration.
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Very useful. Just used it on a company that wanted me to take a subscription. Well now I have one – for an hour 🙂
In this article’s opening paragraph, we find: “Many services and web apps require you to sign up with a valid email address, and they usually check that by sending a verification email to your specified address, which, in turn, might contain a link that you need to visit for the sign up process to complete. While this seems authentic on the service’s part, most users feel uncomfortable in doing so because of the resultant plethora of spam and promotional emails that bombard your inbox.”
About this I just HAVE to say: Reputable web sites, which have a sort of “culture” of non-spamming accountability, and which back it up with a privacy policy (PP) and terms of service agreement (TOS) to which they actually adhere, do not send a “plethora of spam and promotional emails.” Granted, Ashampoo would at least appear to prove all that wrong, but there’s an easy way to login to one’s account there (which one automatically gets when one requests either a free or paid-for registration code to make any of Ashampoo’s software work), and simply turn off all emails of any kind from Ashampoo. (Sadly, as soon as one gets another code for another product, Ashampoo behaves as though all bets are off and begins spamming again; but if one just remembers, as long as they’re logged-in to get the new code, to turn off all emails from Ashampoo, then it’s not really a problem.) One can do this, and Ashampoo respects and honors it, because even despite its unbelievably aggressive email marketing tactics, the company nevertheless has a PP and TOS to which it strictly adheres.
Even gaming and music sites, and shopping sites — at least the better and more professional ones — have a PP and TOS, and both honor their customers because of it, and strictly ahere to it. And so, then, no spam (at least if one opts out of it) comes from such sites.
So, then, let’s cut right to the chase, here, shall we? It’s really just disreputable gaming and music sites, hacker/cracker/warez sites, bit torrent sites, and PORN sites which which either have no PP or TOS, or just ignore it if they DO have one for appearance’s sake; and so who both spam the hell out of any email addresses used to sign-up for them; and/or, worse, sell said email addresses to others, even if the owners of said email addresses expressly opt-out of receiving anything during sign-up.
If one confines oneself to only signing-up for things which are reputable and legal, then one will have no spamming problems whatsoever; and I wish those who promote disposable email addresses would stop making it sound like websites on the Internet cannot, generally, be trusted. The vast majority of them can. In fact, many of the site certificate vendors which sell the annually-renewed certificates which allow the sites to use SSL (https://) encryption so they can collect credit card data insist on them behaving honorably and ethically; and on having a PP and TOS, and an email marketing opt-out mechanism which they actually honor.
Heck, there are even reputable (if that word may even be applied, under these circumstancs, without being inherently oxymoronish) porn sites out there which have PP, TOS and email marketing opt-out policies which they honor.
The fact is that It’s mostly just kids (or grown-ups with arrested development) who insist on living the margins of Internet (and society), and so need a disposable email address. Either that, or they’re trying to pull a fast one in some other way. Don’t kid a kidder.
Now, all that said, I actually CAN think of at least one use of disposable email addresses, and that’s so that one may exercise one’s free speech rights anonymously…
…which, in some countries, is necessary in order to write freely without endangering one’s own life. Even in the US, though the First Amendment protects speaking/writing freely from government punishment, there can be private consequences for writing/speaking freely, in the form of an employer, for example, who reads what one has freely written pursuant to his/her rights of free speech, and which employer who didn’t like what s/he wrote then subsequently trumping-up an alleged transgression by the employee as grounds for his/her job termination because what s/he wrote.
But, even then, a simple GMAIL, or Yahoo, or HotMail address can typically provide all the anonymity that most people would ever need (since it would take a court order for whomever would like to know who’s behind the email address to actually be told it… and court orders don’t come easy… there’s got to be a darned good reason before a judge will grant one), at least in the United States. In other countries I realize that the game is different.
I used to believe that there should be no Internet anonymity because of the ease with which one may be defamed online by anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer, and a grudge. I have been horribly defamed online — in largest measure by those whom my activism against degree/diploma-mills have harmed — and so I once believed that to eliminate the possibiltiy of that, no one should be allowed to post online withhout his/her identity being somehow known, so that there would be accountability. I even wrote an article about it in 1995 which got published on the Time-Warner web site; and ended-up being liberally quoted from in at least three masters degree thesis’s and one doctoral dissertation of which I’m aware… for which I felt honored.
But, as it turned out, I was wrong. And I now admit it… and wear it. From the very beginnings of this great nation (the United States, for those unclear about the nation to which I’m referring… and, yes, I realize that MANY don’t think it’s all that great anymore… but now I digress), anonymous speech was essential to its founding and ultimate success. Had those who wished to decry British tyrrany not been able to post anonymous bills on trees and barnsides, and to otherwise anonymously pamphleteer, so that they could freely express their dissent without there being dire consequences, the United States, as we know it, would not exist today; and/or would be only a few years from having finally been liberated from British rule and/or control… like India or Hong Kong.
Anonymous speech, then, even though it can be a vehicle for defamation, is essential to a truly free society. The Arab Spring, for example, would not have been possible without it. Neither would the current worldwide “Occupy” movement.
Abuse of anonymity is, sadly, the price we pay for our freedoms; and that abuse, then, imposes on us all a duty to be discerning and to figure out what’s true and what isn’t, and then decide for ourselves what to believe and subsequently potentially act.
So, in the end, disposable email addresses must exist…
…even though the vast majority of their users are really just trying to pull a fast one of some kind.
[sigh] Oh, well. It is what it is.
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Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Why was this comment (which I refused to finish reading after the second paragraph) four times longer than the actual article??? Send us a link to your website for the official rant than here, dude. Seriously.
What… the scroll wheel on your mouse doesnn’t work? You can’t just scroll down past it to the next comment? You need to have what you do and do not choose to read decided FOR you?
I have no sympathy for those — usually young people — who have no tolerance for depth. Young multi-taskers want everything in sound bites and snippets. To them, a USA Today article is “long;” and an in-depth New Yorker Magazine, or New Yort Times article would just about KILL ’em to have to read.
The result is that we now have a new generation of young people walking the planet who have massive breadth, but no depth, to their understanding of the universe…
…and so they end-up complaining in places like this about their having, heaven forbid, to read more than a few hundred characters about something…
…and refer to people as “dude,” to boot.
Grow-up, kid. There’s more to the world than your sound bites and snippets universe.
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Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Sorry Gregg …. TLDR 🙂
Sorry Guest …. TBYL 🙂
So does that mean you enjoyed this product? And that you would be proud to recommended it, but only to others that have that…..what do you call it…. “culture”…… These comments are ,from what I understand, for post relating to the article being written about. Is it good, bad? What you liked, what you didn’t like…things like that. Granted your story, or dissertation, depending on what the audience considers it as, may support valid points that would be appropriate, if this was an appropriate place to present; however, it’s not. Can you please just post you comments about the product being discussed? And if you would like to express how you feel about a certain situation in general, find somewhere else to place it.
well said!
Gregg – you really need to get a life. And you’re breeding? Geez. Feel sorry for those kids for sure….. no matter their age.