I will begin by stating the obvious: SPAM is a problem. E-mail addresses are collected from websites and sold to evil spammers daily. Victims have their inbox filled with invitations to join dating sites, XXX sites, to buy cheap drugs that are probably fake or software that is probably pirated. SPAM has not only become an annoyance, it has become an expense. Missed legitimate e-mails, increased bandwidth costs, clogged networks, reduced employee productivity, and other issues cost the US Economy $21.58 billion annually, according to the 2004 National Technology Readiness Survey. Unfortunately, the need to give out your e-mail address in certain circumstances remains.
Consider this scenario: you are researching a work project and find a user group that discusses the very topic you need information on. You utilize their site search and find the perfect thread. There’s just one problem, you can’t access the information without joining. To your annoyance, joining means giving them your e-mail address and receiving an e-mail with an activation link. You can’t put a fake e-mail address in the form because then you won’t get the activation link. Your only option is to give up your preciously guarded e-mail address and hope for the best. Well, now there’s a better solution.
10MinuteMail.com offers a temporary e-mail solution for these very instances. As the site explains: “By clicking on the link below, you will be given a temporary e-mail address. Any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page. You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes.”
The technology behind the scenes is pretty simple. It is a webmail interface that auto-generates e-mail addresses for 10 minutes at a time, then deletes them. If you need more time, there is a link to request another 10 minutes, then another 10 minutes and so on. Since you have full e-mail control, there is no reason you can’t use these temporary e-mail addresses to register for websites. In fact, the company changes their domain monthly to keep sites from blocking the domains of these temporary e-mail addresses.
I have always like the quote: “The best defense is a good offense.” Instead of using filters to reduce the spam, let’s stop it before it starts. Thank you 10MinuteMail.com for a preventative solution.