Roll-Your-Own Throwaway Email Addresses

Keeping your inbox free of junk requires a multi-tiered strategy.

1. Avoid giving your email address to those you don't trust
2. Avoid otherwise publishing your email address on the web
3. Use a filtering system to block the remaining junk

I am predictably going to suggest the SpamButcher email filtering software for the last item.

The first item sometimes presents a challenge. Most of us have learned by now not to signup for online sweepstakes. What if a service we need wants an email address, but we don't quite trust them?

This problem can occur both online and in the physical world. Often at job fairs and other seminars, they now require an email address to get in the door. You may want the email address to actually work if you expect them to contact you with valuable information. In the off chance they decide to spam you, it would be better to give them one that is bogus. The problem is that sometimes you don't know what's going to happen beforehand.

A solution is using a throwaway email address. You can create a specific email address for just a given purpose. If it starts getting junk mail, you just shut it down.

There are plenty of free services out there that offer this functionality. If you run your own domain, there's a good chance you can set it up without relying on a third-party.

Many ISP's let you simply enable a "catch-all" email address for your domain. I've set it up, so any otherwise undefined addresses go to my account. For example, spammenow@spambutcher.com and jobfairsignup@spambutcher.com both really just point to rich@spambutcher.com.

If any of those addresses become problematic, I have the option of shutting them down a number of ways. It can be done either by redirecting the specific alias to the "bit bucket" or just setting up a custom filter in SpamButcher. Most email clients also support this basic level of filtering.

Using unrestricted wildcards has a downside to it. You potentially open yourself up to "drive by spammers" who bomb entire domains with common addresses. As I'd mentioned in a prior article, I actually want to get spam - so this doesn't really present a problem for me. This also seems to be less of a problem with low-profile domains as opposed to large ISPs.

A slightly different approach is to manually configure additional aliases pointing to your account. As a result, messages from spammers sent to random email addresses still bounce. The main downside is that managing the plethora of aliases can become overwhelming over time.

You also can't make up email addresses on-the-fly; cute_girl_i_met_at_the_club@spambutcher.com would, unfortunately, result in a "bounce" message.

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