Thinking about using temporary throw away email
 

Does anyone use one of these?

https://10minutemail.com/
https://temp-mail.org/en/

why would I want to?

Similar concept to a burner phone.

From the link...

"Why would you use this?

Maybe you want to sign up for a site which requires that you provide an e-mail address to send validation e-mail to. And maybe you don't want to give up your real e-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam lists. This is nice and disposable. And it's free. Enjoy!"

Hotmail lets you have a few anonymous, semi-disposable emails which get forwarded to your main email, while keeping it secret. You can add and remove them as you see fit.

Gmail lets you do two things...it ignores the period "." and it ignores everything after a plus "+". If your Gmail is "robot123" you can give someone "ro.bo.t1.23+extra" and it will get sent to you, while keeping your real email hidden. You can use this to track cookies. Give (for example) www.cnn.com your email as "robot123+CNN" and you can tell exactly who they sell the email to, if you get emails from other companies sent to "robot123+CNN". Now, this isn't quite as anonymous as the hotmail one, since you're core email address is basically in the other ones, but it's east to use.

Wow: I did not know that google trick. But… can’t someone see it ends in gmail.com, then remove the ‘.’ And everything after the plus? I guess it finds lazy people that share emails.

Outlook.com lets me make lots of aliases.

A friend - genuinely not me! asked if I knew of an anonymous email that can't be traced back to him. Even by p_olice. He wanted to do a major whistle blowing about something important, but wouldn't tell me what it is.

I told him I have a PV clearance (highest level government security clearance here in NZ) and he can tell me anything, but he still wouldn't tell me LOL

So do you think on of the above methods would work for him?

Problem with this method is dumbazz webdevs who dont know what the actual RFCs say constitutes a potentially valid address

So I change the extension character on my servers to be a hyphen instead

Favorite part is that it lets me identify who is sharing my info so I can take appropriate action

Find a poorly secured mail server and telnet to port 25 from a public/open connection and send mail old school style

I have 4 Gmail accounts.

One is for friends and family

One is for the sites that I may only visit once that requires a validation email and also for mailing lists

One is for important things like banks, investment sites, and medical sites.

I have another one that I haven't used since I sold the business

The system works pretty well except I made the mistake of including PayPal in my "important sites" email. When you buy something through PayPal they give your email address to the vendor. So my otherwise cleanest email gets spam from every vendor I ever sent money to through PayPal.

Proton mail

I am sick of junk mail and have used an address for all the things I never want to read but if the above temporary burner addresses work then that would be even better.

Thanks for all the replies but has anyone used anything like the above?

https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/set-up-hide-my-email-mm9d9012c9e8/icloud#:~:text=To%20keep%20your%20personal%20email ,already%20created%20for%20the%20website.

Also https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602 which s requires Safari so that part is not optimal.

Depending on the “why” use Proton…

Yeah so… anonymity? On the internet?

Assume anything with bits is going to be recorded. Doesn’t matter what service you use. From what I can tell it’s foolish to assume there’s any privacy or security on the internet.

Write a letter through a lawyer?

This would do it. I'm not sure that it's legal. If there's no logon banner announcing that the server is only for authorized users, then it may be fine.

Short of that, I'd be concerned about any electronic means, because there's always the possibility of a "paper trail". Email servers can have logs that would be traceable.

Certain vendors may advise that they are anonymous, but I personally wouldn't trust that. If someone came to them with a court order or subpoena, I think the information would be available.

I'm not familiar with Proton mail. But like I said, anything electronic could easily have full logs.

Absolutely! I work in IT, and I can tell you that in pretty much anywhere that I've worked in the last 15 years had full logs to show exactly where/when/what is done.

A little light reading....

https://proton.me/mail/security

I second this. I personally hate gmail, something about the interface bothers me. I use proton mail for anything important when I’m sending docs, otherwise I use Fastmail. It’s not free, but inexpensive, and they do a great job at getting rid of spam. I have several emails, and I generally have one that I only use for online shopping or anytime I have to give out an email to someone - that account does not get used for any correspondence.

Make a backup real email address, and anything I don't really care about gets that one. I assume almost everything that goes to it is spam.