Spambox.us – Possibly the best temporary email ID provider

Temporary or disposable email addresses are the best way to fight spam. When you signup on a website for some service that require you to submit your email address, instead of giving away your primary email ID you can submit a temporary email ID that expires within a few hours. The few hours for which the temporary email ID remains valid is enough for you to complete registration to the website or forum. After the temporary ID expires, any mail that is sent to that address is bounced back or lost. This way your primary email ID remains spam free.

There are many web services that provide free disposable email addresses. Spambox.us is one that stands apart from the rest.

Usually a temporary email address provider lets you choose an ID for your inbox, which becomes your throwaway email address. Using that ID you can login to the your temporary inbox to check mail. In most cases no signup is required – just type your ID and view your mails.

Spambox functions differently. Here you submit your “real” email address and choose an expiry time that ranges from 30 minutes to up to a year. Spambox will then generate a random temporary email ID for you which you submit when registering on a website. All mails sent to this temporary ID are forwarded to your real email address. The benefit of this is that it lets you read mails right from your primary inbox. After the temporary email ID expires, all mails sent to this ID are discarded. You can even extend the lifetime of your inbox if you want.

Another feature that makes Spambox unique is the ability to use your own domain to create temporary email IDs. All you need to do is create a DNS MX entry directing mails to mx1.spambox.us, in your domain or subdomain. For example, you can use spam.mydomain.com as your temporary email server.

Spambox is free and available in multiple different languages.