Gossip

Mailinator re-invents bit bucket, and saves you from spam

It works like this. You just never give out your real email address. How?

You go to a web site, like this one for a small item of information. And you discover that before they'll let you read it, they want your life history, and a "valid email address" to which they can send mindless adverts.

You fill in alphabet soup for the life history, as always, and then, instead of your real email, you type in a clever name. You call yourself (for example) clevername and press "submit" with a clear conscience.

Then you go to www.mailinator.com and ask for all mail for clevername@mailinator.com and bingo! there's the spam they send. It may include an ID and password.

If this is an important site, of course, you are taking a small risk, because ANYBODY can log onto mailinator.com and try to see if there's any mail for clevername. How they would know to try clevername, I can't guess. But, perhaps, they might.

Since most of the mail in clevername's mailbox is going to be spam, and it won't be kept for long either, because its purpose is to have a write-only storage facility or "bit bucket" which nobody ever reads, I suspect nobody will try. But why not knock yourself out? Go read my mail ...