Cerebral Gibberish

Don’t you just hate how many web site require that you provide them with an email address in order to access the site or even having to provide an email address when filling out a form in the real world. I know I do and I really don’t like using my real email address just to have it added to a mailing list in the future without my permission. Since I control my own mail server I tend to create an email alias per web site / form so I don’t have to supply my normal email address. This also allows me to know which web site decided to sell my email address to a mailing list and allows me to disable the alias without worrying that I will have to change my normal email address. This method works well except for having to manage all the email aliases and creating them before I use them.

The other day I learned of a service called Mailinator which basically accepts email for any email address @mailinator.com (or any of their alternative domains) and stores it for a period of time before removing the emails. To access any emails sent to these address you just go to their web site and type in the email address off you go. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed for that email address to keep up with emails that arrive to it. This service solve the two problems with my current email alias method in that I don’t have to manage or maintain the aliases on my server and I don’t have to make the email aliases before I can use them. I can use an address once just to validate an account on a web site and never have to check it again or I can just use RSS to keep up with accounts that I might want to keep around for awhile. Check it out!