Spam now accounts for over 90 percent of all e-mail received, according to a recent study by US-based Panda Labs, a company that makes Internet security products. But you probably don’t need an official study or a company to tell you just how troublesome spam has become. All you need to do is look at your inbox — or, if you employ some kind of anti-spam software, your Spam folder.
Most anti-spam software doesn’t really get rid of the problem of spam, however. It just moves it out of your inbox. It’s true that there are also solutions that deal with spam at the server level, wiping out suspected spam before you ever download it. But such approaches are too risky for most people because there’s a good chance that legitimate messages may be inadvertently zapped.
To truly get rid of spam, you have to make sure that potential spammers don’t get your primary e-mail address. And there’s really only one way to do that: have one or more “disposable” e-mail addresses that you give out online to sources you don’t know or trust. Luckily, there are a number of ways to create disposable e-mail addresses. Here’s a rundown of the best.
Mailinator
Think about the number of times that you need to give our your e-mail address once — and only once. It may be to gain access to a Web site, to sign up for a forum, or to download a file. If you’re sure that you’ll never need to communicate by e-mail with whatever resource you’re accessing, there’s no reason to provide an e-mail address that is in any way permanent. If you do, you’re setting yourself up to receive gobs of spam.
The solution is a service such as Mailinator (http://www.mailinator.com). Mailinator is one of the original “disposable” e-mail services, and…