If you are intrigued by the Mission Impossible type exploding sunglasses once the information is read, then there's something to replicate in the online world as well — it's disposable email address!

Why would anyone require such a thing in the first place? The answer is confidentiality and avoiding spam. Many a times you are required to give out your personal email address for online and offline registrations, but as you go on doing this, the volume of spam mails also increase in your inbox. Today we are going to take a look at some free services that offer self-destructive addresses so that you can give them away easily without having to worry about spam or revealing your identity (personal email) to others when not required.

GuerrillaMail.com

This website provides an email address that expires automatically after 60 minutes. No registration is required on this site. There are two options to start off — first by clicking 'Get Temporary Email' link which generates a random address, or using 'Set Temporary Email' to check it, both takes the form name@guerrillamailblock.com
This email website has got no inbox. It automatically refreshes and shows if there's any new email along with a reload link to force the check manually.

Mailinator.com

This is a bit advanced form of self-destructive email websites and does away with even the generation of an email address before one can use this service. Simply enter the required username in 'Check your inbox!' field and press 'Check My Inbox' button.

The site works without a password and requires only a username. If anyone else has already taken up the entered username, emails of that user will be displayed — a security trade-off common in disposable addresses. Therefore, make sure you enter a unique username, try mixing alphanumeric characters if required. Ensure that no one else has already taken up the username already, i.e. the inbox should be empty when checked the first time. Now simply send a test email at this address and check it over the web. Mailinator keeps only 10 emails and that too for a few hours only.

Now, one might ask a valid question here — giving out my mail address means I am allowing anyone to go to Mailinator and check my emails too? The answer is yes. To guard against this, there's a feature of alternate inbox name. Say you entered test123 in 'Check your inbox!' field and if it didn't exist before, you will be presented with an alternate inbox name, say M8R-k0ju151. Now instead of giving out the original test123 address, give out the alternate name M8R-k0ju151@mailinator.com but while checking the inbox, use test123 as inbox name as no email stays in the alternate address. In this way, only you know the original mailbox name and all the mails are forwarded there. And there's no need to remember the alternate address either — checking the inbox with usual test123 inbox name shows the alternate address.

Spamgourmet.com

This is an innovative spam protection site as it allows users to create email addresses controlling the number of times emails can be sent. Register yourself by entering the desired username and a valid email address (to which emails from disposable address will be forwarded) in 'Create an account' section on the left and press 'Go'. Once the username is selected, simply give it out in this form some word.x.username@spamgourment.com where some words can be used to identify the reason to use the address. x denotes number of times you would like to receive email on this address after which it will be self-destructed while username is the name used for registration. For example, it could be shopping.1.myname@spamgourment.com to give out at a shopping booth, allowing just one email to be forwarded to your real email address. This way, your real address remains protected and safe. There's also an advanced mode available that allows sending emails from one of the disposable aliases created over this site.
Using disposable email addresses is a good idea while trying out new services that require online registration, particularly those which are to be used only once. Such services might be scams to gather real email addresses to be used in mass mailing lists and online advertising. Keeping away unwanted emails is also one of the advantages of using these services, in addition to using 'Mark as spam' option in most of the free online email services available today.

Whatever option you use, it's always good to be aware of all the tools available at your disposal to fight the menace of spam!