Hotmail adds aliases, not disposables

If you have been following this blog for any length of time, you have probably seen that one common recommendation for combatting spam is to establish a ‘throw away’ or disposable email address to use when you must provide an email address for some purpose, like a website registration, but you specifically do not want to continue receiving email from that site.

Microsoft’s Hotmail service has allowed users to append a tag to their email address, using a + sign, for ages now. Say you want to register for some service on a website called example.com, but you are not sure you want them to flood you with email on a daily basis. If your Hotmail address is admin@hotmail.com, you could enter in admin+example@hotmail.com to receive any confirmation email from the site, but once you have what you need, you could simply set your account to flag all mail sent to admin+example@hotmail.com as spam, and never deal with it again. This feature, which is offered by other webmail provides such as Gmail, has become less effective as spammers started to recognise, and automate, the removal of the +phrase from email addresses.

Now Microsoft has rolled out a new offering for Hotmail users. You can create up to five email aliases per year, associate them to your existing Hotmail account, and send and receive email from that alias for as long as you want. Once your need for this alias is done, you simply delete the alias and receive no more mail for that address.

There are limits to this however. For now, you can only create five aliases per year, with a total of fifteen per email account. While many sites are referring to this new service as a solution for disposable or throwaway purposes, Hotmail is not, and you shouldn’t consider them as disposable either. These addresses are more of a short term solution or alternate address  than a truly disposable or throw away account. The annual limit and the lifetime maximum both should looked at as aliases more than as disposable accounts. You can read more about the new Hotmail service at the Windows Team Blog.

If you want disposable addresses for short-term spammable accounts, there are several services on the Internet available to you. Here are four that I recommend.

• Mailinator

My personal favourite, Mailinator is quick, easy to use, and requires no account. However, it does display everything for all the world to see, so if someone figures out your disposable address they can view all the mail. Do not use this for password resets or any other personal information.

• E4ward

E4ward does just what the name implies; it forwards email to your ‘real’ account.

• Spamex

Spamex is more for the power user who wants to use disposable email as a regular part of their activities. While it does offer a 30 day free trial, users must register for an account and pay a $9.95 annual fee. If I needed disposable email addresses all the time, I would use this service, but for the occasional need, it is more than I require.

• Gentlesource

Gentlesource sells an application that allows you to set up a ‘do it yourself’ disposable email service on your website. If you need to enable users to exchange messages on a temporary basis, and want to maintain control of this information rather than outsourcing it, Gentlesource’s Temporary Email is just what you need.

There are many other disposable email providers on the Internet. Which do you use and which would you advise other readers to avoid?