From time to time, everyone has run into this situation: you're trying to download some software, a white paper, whatever. And you need to provide an email address. Give that Web site your work or personal address and you're sure to get hit with follow-up emails, or worse, random spam.
What to do?
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A handful of companies have begun providing "disposable" email addresses. How are they disposable? They work for a short period and then they literally self-destruct (some providers let you decide when they stop working; others just stop after fifteen minutes or so -- once you've accomplished what you need).
Lifehacker today has a review of one of them, the aptly-named Guerrilla Mail, while in the posts' comments section readers recommend a few more, including 10 Minute Mail, Prong, spamla and Mailexpire.
While such services can obviously be quite useful on a personal level, they could be a small business's worst nightmare, especially one that counts on harvesting (legitimate) customer email addresses to build its business.
You think getting your customer email or promotional blast past a spam filter is a pain, what if the email address your customer gives you in the first place lasts only a few minutes.
This certainly isn't a new problem -- many customers submit fake email addresses or webmail accounts they use only for subscribe/delete purposes.
But the trend of self-destructing email addresses is certainly one worth watching for smartbiz's that rely on email for customer interactions.
