Travel Technology - Disposable/forwarding e-mail

The last thread I saw about this http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=322736 is almost three years old, so I thought I'd see what people are using these days.

I've been using Mailshell www.mailshell.com happily for several years after reading about them in the Wall Street Journal. It allows me to create an unlimited number of disposable e-mail addresses that forward to the address of my choice. It's very useful in that I can create unique addresses when I register at websites. And it's free. :)

I think Mailshell terminated new signups for this service a while ago.

When I went to their website recently, I saw a bulletin that Mailshell was terminating the service altogether at the end of February or soon after.

I e-mailed the customer service asking whether, indeed, the service I was using was ending and they confirmed this. They sent me a link about other services, though they did not have any specific recommendations.
http://email.about.com/cs/dispaddrrevs/tp/disposable.htm

Since within a few weeks the company will shut down my account and I will lose all my unique addresses, I have to try to find an alternative so that I can change my subscriptions, registrations, etc.

Suggestions?

fuzz

Gmail does the trick just fine for me:

http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/12/30/the-gmail-disposable-email-address-hack/

Get your own domain name and set up a catch-all address.

Then everything @yourdomain.com gets forwarded to your real e-mail address. You can then set up filters to block individual addresses that get compromised.

There are also some e-mail providers (like fastmail.fm) who allow you to add "+whatever" to your e-mail address. So if your address is me@fastmail.fm, you can set up me+disposableaddress1@fastmail.fm and me+disposableaddress2@fastmail.fm and they'll all be delivered to you. In fact, they'll all even get filed in individual folders if the folders exist. So if you want to set up a family folder, give all your family members the address me+family@fastmail.fm, and all their messages will go into the family folder automatically. Fastmail also allows you to use a subdomain with the same effect, so you can give out disposableaddress1@me.fastmail.fm.

I have been using Yahoo's with much success.
It can be a pain setting up a new address for each site you use, but it makes a difference in the long run.

I second the domain name. It's like $8 or less a year, you forward everything and you know where things are coming from.

Then you have an unlimited number of addresses

I third the domain thing. Here's how I set it up...

1.
UA@mydomain.com
NW@mydomain.com
travelocity@mydomain.com
orbitz@mydomain.com
etc.
All forward to travel@mydomain.com

2.
amazon@mydomain.com
buy@mydomain.com
compusa@mydomain.com
officedepot@mydomain.com
etc.
All forward to shop@mydomain.com

You get the picture.

I second the domain name. It's like $8 or less a year, you forward everything and you know where things are coming from.

Then you have an unlimited number of addresses

Thanks for this info. Is there a primer about setting up one's own domain? Do I need to pay a host as well, or will the whole process be less than 10 dollars a year? That seems like a bargain!

fuzz

For times when you just need to get an email once, like a website registration, 10 Minute Mail (http://www.10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html) is helpful. It generates an address that is good for (wait for it) 10 minutes, which is usually long enough to get those confirmations, though you can keep extending it if necessary.

Thanks for this info. Is there a primer about setting up one's own domain? Do I need to pay a host as well, or will the whole process be less than 10 dollars a year? That seems like a bargain!

fuzzI think Godaddy has an email forwarding service that's $10 year, plus the annual cost of the domain name that's $8-$9 a year.

I have been using www.spamgourmet.com for the last couple of years and have been satisfied with it. you can create an unlimited number of addresses that self destruct after a predetermined number of uses or you can specifically configure an address to be permanent. It can also be configured so that your real email address is still hidden even when you respond to an email sent to one of your spamgourmet addresses.

I use both namecheap and namesecure.com. They are both in the under $10 a year range, though namesecure I don't believe offers free forwarding for mail anymore.

It's as simple as just going in and filling out a form after you select the name you want (assuming it's available) and then telling it where to send the mail once they get it set up for you.

godaddy is in that price range too, and gives you 100 different forwarding addresses at your domain for free too.

I use www.pobox.com and love them. They offer domain mail services, as well as "standard" email service with their domains. Great spam filtering, and cheep :)

http://www.mailexpire.com

You can select how long it lasts (minutes to a month or so)

You can also kill it EARLY if you start getting spam on it.

I third the domain thing. Here's how I set it up...

1.
UA@mydomain.com
NW@mydomain.com
travelocity@mydomain.com
orbitz@mydomain.com
etc.
All forward to travel@mydomain.com

2.
amazon@mydomain.com
buy@mydomain.com
compusa@mydomain.com
officedepot@mydomain.com
etc.
All forward to shop@mydomain.com

You get the picture.

I think it's much easier to just set up a "catch-all" rather than setting up individual addresses. Anything sent to any address @yourdomain.com will come to you, so you don't have to set up each address individually. The only downside to this is that sometimes you'll get random spam at addresses you don't actually use (particularly sales@, info@, advertising@, webmaster@ and other common addresses like those). You can just blackhole those addresses in your spam filters, though.

As mentioned above, Godaddy includes 100 free forwarding addresses with basic domain registration (which is <$10/year). You can also set up one of your forwarding addresses as a catch-all for any unspecified address. So, for example, you can set up the following three accounts:

1) sister@mynewdomain.com forwards to sister@gmail.com
2) brother@mynewdomain.com forwards to brother@yahoo.com
3) me@mynewdomain.com forwards to me@fastmail.fm
and is marked as a catch-all, so anything other than sister or brother @mynewdomain.com will forward to me@fastmail.fm, too.

Back to using a disposable address... spamex.com

I've used them for 4 years without any problems. They have different service levels and the mail gets to my inbox fairly quick.

I have done the catch-all thing with my own domain.. No thanks! I got a lot of spam when the spammer decided to try mailing every username they could think of for my domain.

i like this idea of using my domain and then using each vendor's name as the specific address @ my domain. that way too, over time i'll start to see who set me up to being receiving all of those ridiculously rude $500 home depot gift certificates etc.

thanks.

Don't you find you get spam to too many different names with a catchall? I discontinued using these a few years ago because it seemed impossible to catch the spam anymore because stuff would get sent to anything and everything at a given domain, and with the catchall, it ALL becomes a valid address. It's just as much of a pain to blackhole all those possibilities as it is to set up aliases for all the addresses you actually want to use.

Honestly, I've been using fewer addresses, not more, and the spam filtering is doing well enough for me. One work address, one main personal address in gmail and even with a couple of really long-time domain addresses forwarded to the gmail the vast majority of the spam goes right into the spam mailbox and I get very few false positives. Same at work now, very rare single spam into my inbox, no false positives. I'm happy enough with that that I don't spend any time trying to blackhole stuff or create multiple aliases or temporary accounts or such.

Don't you find you get spam to too many different names with a catchall? I discontinued using these a few years ago because it seemed impossible to catch the spam anymore because stuff would get sent to anything and everything at a given domain, and with the catchall, it ALL becomes a valid address. It's just as much of a pain to blackhole all those possibilities as it is to set up aliases for all the addresses you actually want to use.In my experience, it's just the obvious addresses that get spam, nothing like a dictionary attack. Addresses such as

admin@...
sales@....
jobs@...
info@...
et cetera...

http://www.reflexion.net/index.php

I haven't used it, but the bit that sounds nice is that its service can remember who you gave each "temporary" address to, and auto-reject messages when a new sender uses someone else's temporary address for you.

Bob

Don't you find you get spam to too many different names with a catchall? I discontinued using these a few years ago because it seemed impossible to catch the spam anymore because stuff would get sent to anything and everything at a given domain, and with the catchall, it ALL becomes a valid address.

Another disadvantage is that some webhosts no longer all catch all addresses.

I'm using fastmail (plus addressing described above) and it works well for me.

I have my domaine at hostgator.com . Its cheap and reliable with unlimited e-mail addresses
Jim

In my experience, it's just the obvious addresses that get spam, nothing like a dictionary attack. Addresses such as

admin@...
sales@....
jobs@...
info@...
et cetera...

I've been running catch-alls on multiple domains for a few years now, and haven't had too much trouble with spam. Most of my domains get almost no spam at all (at least not that get through my spam filters).

One of my domains used to get a lot of "obvious address" spam like nerd's examples above. Those were easily blackholed and I now get almost none of it.

Another of my domains (the one I use the most) has been trickier to control, because some spammer decided to use randomly generated usernames (vxwed@mydomain, oiuwre@mydomain, etc.) as the "From" addresses on his spam, so I was getting a lot of backscatter (bounced messages that I never sent in the first place). My e-mail provider upgraded their spam filters to provide better filtering of backscatter spam, but a tiny bit still sneaks through in fits and starts. It's not enough to outweigh the usefulness of the catch-all, though, so I'm sticking with it for now.

Another of my domains (the one I use the most) has been trickier to control, because some spammer decided to use randomly generated usernames (vxwed@mydomain, oiuwre@mydomain, etc.) as the "From" addresses on his spam, so I was getting a lot of backscatter (bounced messages that I never sent in the first place).I've gotten this, too. How do spammers decide what domain to use in a spoofed 'from' address? It can't be related to having a catch-all user at that domain, can it?

I've gotten this, too. How do spammers decide what domain to use in a spoofed 'from' address? It can't be related to having a catch-all user at that domain, can it?

I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to how spammers pick their spoofed return addresses.