stopwatchLike most of you, I HATE spam!  Due to my disdain for junk in my inbox, I’m very selective with regards to whom I share my e-mail address with.  If your address falls into the wrong hands, you’re pretty much doomed to a life of discarding Viagra ads and come-ons for pirated software.

Of course, however, for access to lots of online services, or to post to many blogs, you’ve got to register and supply an e-mail address. If you already get enough e-mail spam, you probably aren’t in the market to add to that total. That means that in many cases what you need is a “disposable” e-mail address.

I have, on (admittedly) more than one occasion, created a ‘junk mail’ address with a vendor such as GMail, to use as the e-mail I can freely provide to websites with confidence, knowing that I can always dump the address if my inbox becomes too junk-laden.  One organization took it one step further.

Enter: 10 minute Mail.

10 Minute Mail is a free service that lets you do just what it sounds like. Just go to their site, click on the “Get my 10 Minute Mail e-mail address” link, and you’ve got an e-mail address that will be valid for exactly ten minutes. That should be enough time for you to use to sign up for the service you’re joining, receive the confirming e-mail back to you, and to finally send the “yes, it’s really me” message back to the website– then the address just goes away. If you know you’re going to type slowly, you can add an additional ten minutes to the life of the e-mail account, but the point is this: once you’ve used it, you don’t have to worry about it any more, and you won’t add the to burden of your e-mail spam filter by receiving that much more “stuff” from your new best friend.

Check them out at http://10minutemail.com