Thanks to Dave Green's Need to Know newsletter, I've discovered a good way to foil some of the e-mail harvesters.
Many websites require you to enter an email address before you can download software, updates or whatever. In some cases, you can enter any old garbage, such as fakeaddress@idontexist.com, and then you'll be allowed to go to the download page. Recognizing that a lot of people do enter bogus addresses, some of these sites have become more cunning - they will send the web address where you can go for the download to the email address that you enter. In other words, if you enter a bogus address, you won't get to the site. On the other hand, if you enter your real email address, they now can add you to their database and contact you with all those wonderful bandwith-hogging advertisement junk mails.
What to do? Simple, enter any name you can think of followed by @mailinator.com (e.g., anynameyoucanthinkof@mailinator.com) when you're asked for an email address; then go to the Mailinator site, enter "anynameyoucanthinkof" in the box and check your mail.
And it can be any name you can think of. Of course, if it's something plain, like joe or frank or jill@mailinator.com, someone else may be using it too. So you're better off using something esoteric that you will be able to remember, such as "bobthewonderfulguy" or "superjillsmith". The addresses aren't password protected so anyone can go to the Mailinator site, enter a name at random and see the mail that's waiting.
There's a limit of 10 messages per mailbox, with no attachments allowed, and mail disappears after "a few hours" according to their faq. You can continue using the same name, or use a different one - it doesn't matter; if the name doesn't exist in the mailinator database, they'll generate it as soon as you enter it. And you can't retrieve the mail using your own email program - you have to get it at mailinator.com.
And of course, your own privacy is protected. You don't give your name or your real email address. And if anyone sends spam to the account, so what? It's gone in a few hours.
I'm sure there are many other potential uses for this service, but the one that immediately sprung to mind was the email harvesting one.
I'm a firm believer in giving out the least amount of demographic information possible on websites. I don't see why Amazon or AOL Times-Warner needs to know my age, gender, birthdate, etc. When required to give this information I usually randomly enter values. We have to fight in every way we can to protect what's left of our privacy. Thanks to mailinator we have one more tool with which to do so.
Posted by wetcoast at August 8, 2003 08:49 AM