Feel Free to Spam Me

This is just beautiful. If you’re anything like me I’m sure you’ve used services like Mailinator for those pesky situations when you *must* supply an email address but you really don’t want to. You know the consequences can be a never-ending barrage of spam to the account – I can testify to this with my original Hotmail account which is pretty much overrun with offers to meet with lonely girls in my area, Viagra, virus cures and methods to enhance my abilities. What did I do? I created another Hotmail account which I guard with my life.

In fact only yesterday, on a publishing website I had to provide an email address to download an eBook. I didn’t want to provide my “real” email address but at the same time it’s not appropriate to use a service like Mailinator as everyone has access to your mails. I’d be receiving account details and a download link to an eBook – clearly inappropriate for “public” consumption. So what did I do? I created another Hotmail account, this time with the _spam suffix – something like MyUsualEmailAddressSpam@hotmail.com.

Not exactly ideal – it’s another account to monitor and another password to remember. I now keep a OneNote list of all my Hotmail accounts so I remember to add them all back to Live Mail when I rebuild my machine!

Today, Hotmail announced aliases. If only I’d known this was coming I could have saved myself all that hassle yesterday. An alias lets me create a new email address and associate it with my existing Hotmail account. Then, when I’m done with it, I just throw it away and create another. (There’s a limit of 5 new aliases per year and a max of 15 on an account).

Imagine my current Hotmail email address is MikeyO@hotmail.co.uk (it isn’t BTW – sorry if yours is). I could create MikeyOSpam@hotmail.co.uk. Or I could be a bit more adventurous and go with ViagraMagnet@hotmail.co.uk. Either way, I can safely give out this email address knowing there’s no way to determine my “real” email address, I can switch them off whenever I want to (and filter on them in my inbox of course) and conveniently they all go to the same account so only one username / password to remember.

That is a thing of beauty and a poke in the eye for all those spammers out there. Nice one Hotmail.

You can start creating aliases here.

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 04, 2011
  I agree, this is a great service, and one that I will be setting up for both myself and the other half.  As for the use of OneNote, couldn't live without it anymore!! Gary

• Anonymous
  February 04, 2011
  If you don't want people to see those mails you could also use services http://10minutemail.com It will generate a random email address for you, and after 10 minutes, it will expire and self destruct. There is the handy "Give me 10 more minutes!" button too but you have to do it manually, or it will self destoy :)

• Anonymous
  February 04, 2011
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• Anonymous
  February 04, 2011
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• Anonymous
  February 04, 2011
  Mikej - There is no dishonesty involved at all in what I've said or what I'm advocating. If you don't want to supply your email address to Microsoft then don't though I'd stress that Microsoft is a company you can trust with those details. Personal data & privacy are taken extremely seriously and we make it easy to manage whether and how MS can contact you. There are many organisations however that don't live up to such standards. Best regards, Mike

• Anonymous
  February 04, 2011
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• Anonymous
  February 04, 2011
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• Anonymous
  February 05, 2011
  I have always found www.spamgourmet.com a great way of dealing with spam emails when i only need the first or second email. Create an account then when you want to give a website an email address you create the email with the number of returned emails you want to send on to your account with the rest being deleted. So spam.2.[accountname]@spamgourmet.com will forward on the first two emails to me and then delete the rest. Next time just create a different prefix. Saved me 1000s of spam emails over the years

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2011
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• Anonymous
  February 05, 2011
  Mikej - I don't have any difficulty following your argument but you maintain it's universally applicable. I disagree. I see at least two "other" scenarios:: [1] When there is no such "deal" - as per the in-store collection example I describe above [2] When the other party with whom the "simple deal" was made reneges on it. Mike

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2011
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• Anonymous
  February 05, 2011
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• Anonymous
  February 05, 2011
  Jason - Yes, I wasn't aware of those until I read the Hotmail article. It's a nice feature thought it would be relatively easy for someone to figure out your "root" email address. Aliases offer complete "disconnection". Mike

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2011
  Thanks for  stating the correct position - I'm sure you did really mean to take this in the first place. The problem is that spam is unsolicited email but there are lots of sources of email you might not want everytime you get it that is solicited and not spam. We use the term too much.

• Anonymous
  February 12, 2011
  Or you could use Gmail.

• Anonymous
  February 13, 2011
  Well I don't see how that would help. Gmail's spam protection is no better than Hotmails AFAIK and they don't offer an equivalent feature yet. Mike

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2011
  Sweet & useful feature - thanks for the information!