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Cool idea (does it exist?) - Find websites that sell your email address

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superboyac:
That's a great idea mouser.  A unique email for each site that can be tracked.  How would you do this, though?  You'd have to create an individual email address for each site, and then you'd have to go through the whole verification process with address, phone number, that random word verification test at the end, and so forth.  It would be hard to automate such a thing.  but if you could, that would be very useful.

BuBBy:
I use sneakemail.com  -  case in point
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/1294

VSiAQ:
I would highly recommend spamgourmet - http://www.spamgourmet.com/  :)

Protect yourself from spam in three easy steps:

1. If you haven't done it yet, create a spamgourmet account. Enter your user name and the email address you want to be protected. You will be asked to identify the word in a picture and pick a password.

2. Spamgourmet will forward to this address all the emails sent to your spamgourmet disposable addresses -- that way you don't have to tell anyone else what it is -- this is why it's called the protected address. Of course, this protected address must exist. That's why you have to confirm it. You'll receive an email asking you to confirm.

3. After you have confirmed your protected address, you can give out self-destructing disposable email addresses whenever you want. The disposable addresses are like:

[email protected]

where someword is a word you have never used before, x (optional) is the number of email messages you want to receive at this address (up to 20, and the number 3 will be used if you leave it out), and user is your username.

For example, if your user name is "spamcowboy", and BigCorp wants you to give them your email address (on the web, on the phone, at a store - it doesn't matter), instead of giving them your protected address, give them this one:

[email protected]
(and [email protected] will work the same way)

This disposable email address will be created here the first time BigCorp uses it (you don't have to do anything to create it), and you'll receive at most 3 messages, forwarded to your protected address. The rest will be indelicately consumed.
--- End quote ---

mouser:
there are a lot of disposable email services.
but i think it would be much more useful to have a way of knowing which websites are selling their email lists, as a way of deciding which websites you should trust.

Carol Haynes:
True - disposable addresses are only really an interim solution.

The other problem is not "who can I trust" but also "how long can I trust them"? Successful websites/web businesses seem to be sold on with increasing vigour these days. Not surprising really if you suddenly get offered a lot of money. Once it changes hands there is no way of know how the new owners are going to try and recoup their costs.

I trust Mouser implicitly with privacy on DC but if a big firm came and offered him $10m he might have pause for thought!

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