Have there been times when you want to sign up for something on the internet but knew once you did you would get "IT?" You know what "IT" is. It is tons of spam from some stupid site that looks like it has something you want or need.
Sometimes even very reputable sites will start spamming you with lots of email. They may get some small amount of money for sending your email address to their business partners. There are many reasons you may be spammed when signing up for things online.
In order to avoid this there are several temporary email address sites out there you may use. However, one that I currently use is called "Instance Mail." You can use it to sign up for sites to whom you do not want to reveal your real email address. You can find it online at instancemail.com.
It is quite simple to use. Once at their site, you enter your real email address and press the "Get new address" button. You will then see the new temporary address. When I used it recently it gave me esprl1la2@instancemail.net as my address (no longer functioning). I know, now you are thinking, "If I give them my real address won’t I get spam from them?" The answer is no, you will not. They are clean. At least they were the last many times I have used Instance Mail. I believe you are quite safe using their site. They do need your email address to verify it as real and give you a little information on how to proceed.
You may also want to take a look at the Options link. There you will see that the expiration for this new email is 120 days. You can make that a shorter time in various increments down to 30 minutes.
Another nice feature is that you can also get the site to send you an email reminder when your address expires. Also, you may add a comment to your address which is actually just a short note letting you know what you used that address for in case you forget.
I find it very interesting as a "web guy" that all of the information you need is found on the one page of their site. You go to that one link to get to everything you need to use at InstanceMail.com. Very convenient and easy to use. There are links there to reuse the email which allows you to extend it another 120 days as many times as you wish.
To sign up at another site use it just as you would your regular email address. For instance, I signed up at a site with the instance email address and the site sent a verification email to the "fake" address. However, it was received in my regular mail’s inbox. That way I could verify it and then use the site. After I was finished with that address I went back to the Instance Mail site and shut my recently used email address down.
If you use this or any of the other temporary email sites let me know what they are and how you like them. This can help you stay safe and more private online.
