Protect your email address from spammers

Protecting your main email address is becoming more and more important.

Phishing attacks (where a scammer send you a email which *looks like* it is from your bank or other trusted source) are dangerous, one slip up and you may find yourself in big trouble.

Other *lose email* practices simply result in your inbox just being filled with garbage – spam, spam and more spam! Use the internet long enough and you will start to receive hundreds of spam emails everyday.

There are a few options available to the average person to tackle spam and it’s dangers:

1. Never give anyone your email address (this is fairly pointless …).

2. Buy spam filter software. This firstly costs money and secondly can cause more headaches when you lose *real* emails to your spam filter – note this happens all the time.

3. Use disposable email addresses – now this is what I use and of course prefer.

Now from the above list option 1 is obviously out, option 2 is common and works for most people, even most free web based email services like fastmail.fm and safe-mail.net have good spam filtering features available) but option 3 is very secure and works like a sledge hammer.

Option 3 is where you use a disposable email address, for example;

1. You have your main email account (can be a web based account or the email account provided by your ISP).

2. You want to *register* on a website, so instead of putting in your main email account you put in a disposable email address instead.

Now, you still receive all the email into your main account as you normally would, but the big difference is, if that particular email ever is sold to spammers or stolen all you simply do is *turn it off*. Therefore no more spam from that address.

Disposable email addresses are perfect for anyone who has a website – the disposable address is published on the website and when to many of the spam robots have your email address simply turn it off and get a new one – replace the old one with your new one of your website.

Disposable email addresses are excellent for security, if you use a different email address for every website sign up or registration then you will know if you receive a *phishing attack* from a email address *your bank does not have* then it is a obvious scam.

I never use my main email address for any registrations on the internet unless I really have to, this includes banks and other financial services as well.

So where do you get a disposable email address? You can get as many as you like here: http://www.sneakemail.com/

And yes, you can also get a free account.

There are limitations with the free account but the limits are so big most people would never have to worry. Just keep in mind the limits and do not signup to a email list that receives thousands of emails a day. For using on websites you would be hard pressed to reach the *free account* limits.

Paid accounts are available of course, those accounts have absolutely huge limits, they are called *Premium* accounts and are only $2.00 a month.

Notes from their website:

1. Create an account: Providing a username, a password, and an email address you wish hidden from spammers.

2. Every time you need to give out your email address to somebody you don’t trust, log in to Sneakemail and create a new Sneakemail address.

3. Give this Sneakemail address to them instead.

Mail sent to this Sneakemail address is rerouted to your real address, and when you reply it is rerouted back to the sender. Your real address is never seen. If you receive unwanted mail through this Sneakemail address, such as spam, you can take control by either filtering incoming mail using the Sneakemail filters, disabling the Sneakemail address itself, or disposing of it permanently. You also now know where a spammer got your address.

Sick of spam? Stop the rot! Secure your inbox today with Sneakemail