A disposable or temporary email address is an email address that you can use once or just temporarily when you need to provide an email address when ordering online, signing up for a service, filling out a form or anything else you are doing online where you are asked to provide an email address, but you do not want to use your personal account.
By not providing your personal email address you can avoid having spam, junk mail, malicious email and other unwanted content delivered to your personal inbox.
Most disposable email services are free to use or offer a free and paid version.
An alternate email address is an email account you setup and use for online activity.
Disposable Email Addresses
TrashMail
TrashMail is simple and straight forward. The email you receive will be forwarded to your personal email address or any address you choose. You can set a limit on the number of messages that are received and the number of days before the disposable address will stop forwarding messages.
TrashMail has a free version and a paid version. The paid version, TrashMail Plus costs $20.99 per year. This is not a standing order and if you do not renew your subscription at the end of the year you will be automatically unsubscribed.
To quote their website their paid service includes
– no external ads
– up to 5000 active disposable addresses
– no alias expiration
– challenge-response system
– send email by web interface
– email support
10 Minute Mail
As the name implies 10 Minute Mail lets you obtain a temporary email address for 10 minutes. You can send, read and reply to email. They also allow you to receive email attachments. The address will expire after 10 minutes. However, there is an option of extending the timer for an additional 10 minutes if you need more time.
When you visit their homepage, you will see a temporary email address. Next to the address is a copy button. Click copy to use the address.
Click the inbox button to view the messages that are received. You can reply to, forward or delete messages.
If you need more time, click the “Get 10 more minutes” button.
Maildrop
Maildrop lets you select your own temporary email address, or you can use one they provide.
According to Maildrop they permit plain text or HTML messages. They do not allow for attachments so any email attachment will be removed. All messages must be less than 500k in size.
To quote Maildrop “an inbox can hold at most 10 messages, and any inbox which does not receive a message within 24 hours will be automatically cleared”
They also use a spam filter so most junk mail will not come through.
Maildrop has no sign up, there is no password associated with the account, no security, and no privacy. It is strictly a temporary email to use quickly and be done with.
Mail Poof
Mail Poof also allows you to choose an address, or they will assign one to you.
When you visit their homepage, you can choose an email address you would like to use or click the button that says “random” and a unique, random email address will be generated for you.
The email address will remain active for as long as you need it but emails are deleted after 24 hours.
When you receive an email message you can download it to your computer if you want to save it. Mail Poof does not permanently store any messages on their server.
Very simple and straight forward, use it and move on.
Alternate & Alias Email Addresses
Alternate & alias email addresses are completely different from a disposable email address. When you setup an alternate email address you setup an account using a free service such as Gmail or Outlook.com. Then you use that account for registrations, online ordering and anything else where you must provide an email address, but you don’t want to use your private, personal email.
Or you can use your existing email account but use an alias email address in that account. Gmail and Outlook.com mail both support alias email addresses.
An alias is an additional email address associated with your mail account. An alias uses the same inbox, contact list, and account settings as your primary email address.
And once the alias has been setup, you can choose which email address you would like to send email from.
The Tech Minimalist 