Throw-away addresses to keep spammers at bay
- Posted July 31st, 2008 at 2:00 pm by AndrewM
- Categories: Yahoo! Mail UK
Keeping safe online is an ongoing battle. By some accounts, up to 90% of all mail is spam. While we are always working hard to ensure most of the spam sent your way never enters your Inbox, there are measures you can take to combat spammers right from within your own Yahoo! Mailbox. In a recent post, I talked about blocking certain email addresses from sending you email. For today’s security tip I want to clue you in to our free (for UK users) Addressguard feature.
First off, here is why using AddressGuard to create disposable email addresses is such a powerful line of defence against spam:
- Give them out when you don’t want to give out your primary Yahoo! Mail address
- Create disposable email addresses with ease
- Have messages delivered to your Inbox or a personal folder
- Simply delete them if they start receiving spam
Second, here’s a great video tutorial to give you an overview. Just click the “Continue” link in the image below:
Click here if you would like to see a full screen version.
Pretty cool, huh? Finally, if you’re ready to get started using disposable addresses, we have a more in-depth tutorial to help you get the most out of Addressguard. It doesn’t matter which version of Yahoo! Mail you use, we have a tutorial for each:
Addressguard tutorial for the all-new Yahoo! Mail
Addressguard tutorial for the classic version of Yahoo! Mail
If you’re new to the idea of using disposable addresses, it’s a great way to combat spam. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’m sure once you start using it, you’ll never stop.
Happy address creating.
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team
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- 0 Comment
July 31st, 2008 at 6:41 pm
HI, I think it’s a good idea and a great way to get rid of junk mail.
August 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 am
Sounds brilliant, must try. thanks Andrew-ymail.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
The problem is that you can only change the base address a couple of times and and then you are stuck with it, which sort of makes it less useful then it could be.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I’d rather Yahoo target the addresses where the spam comes from that keep having to think up new names … I get spam from the same base sources over and over – they might be slightly different but if I can identify them, why can’t Yahoo!
August 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Paul,
Why would you want to change the base address?
At least the time being the spammers haven’t started experimenting by removing parts of the e-mail address, not in a large scale anyway.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
But what about all of the spam that we are already getting to our “primary” email addresses? i know that yahoo has changed its anti spam engine… but its getting ridiculous now the amount of unidentified spam emails!
August 7th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
i agree with sue. also, didn’t there used to be a facility where you could create a list of addresses that you knew to be spam? these addresses were then diverted away from the inbox. i am getting recurring spam to my inbox from one particular source. repeatedly marking it as spam doesn’t seem to be helping but if i could just add the address to this list…giving out disposable addresses seems pointless if the spammers have your email address anyway.
August 10th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Heh, another idea stolen from Google, keep it up, Google-thieves!
August 12th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Sue wrote… I’d rather Yahoo target the addresses where the spam comes from that keep having to think up new names … I get spam from the same base sources over and over – they might be slightly different but if I can identify them, why can’t Yahoo!
Ditto!
Of all the email providers that I now use, Yahoo is far and away the least protected against spammers. I get hundreds each week, mostly from the same senders.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I agree with Sue, these people are not those who have your address, they have got it elsewhere, they will not stop sending you stuff, especially the offers of money from Africa, they will just send it to both. Why can’t stuff that is unwanted be prevented from intering the mail site? You would just end up with loads of sites for no reason as far as I can see.
August 18th, 2008 at 12:14 am
That setup was neat & easy!
August 21st, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Hi, this sounds like a great idea. Will this ever be available free to irish users?
—-
Strange,
It should be free to Irish users. I’ll investigate.
Thanks,
Andrew
August 27th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I am receiving spam e-mails from a drugs company I have sent them e-mails to unsubcribe but its returned unsent what or how can I stop them,
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:24 am
Neve ever ever reply to spam. That just confirms your address as a live account. It will be added to a hot list and passed around to other spamers and you will get lots more spam as a result.
September 7th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Can I apply this guard to my existing email address which is being overwhelmed by spam even though you send lots ofit to the SPAM folder?
September 16th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
what is the remedy for those 100s of SPAM e-mails i already receive on my mobile asa well as on my PC…..Can you help?
September 29th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Whats with the Yahoo! bashing? Its the spammers that are to blame, if you want to do something about it, register with spamcop.net and report them.
And NEVER reply to, click on, forward on spam, it confirms that your address exists.
And dont give out your email address so freely, spammers don’t guess your email address, they find it on bulletin boards, blogs,forums, your website, do a web search for your email address in quotes to find where your address lies online and get rid of it!
October 5th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
thats good.thank you.
October 11th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
how do you do that(search my address in quotes) ive tried and just tells me it cant find it and to try without the quotes???
October 20th, 2008 at 9:32 am
“Of all the email providers that I now use, Yahoo is far and away the least protected against spammers. I get hundreds each week, mostly from the same senders”.???
Try tiscali if you really want to see spam in bulk
October 20th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Sounds like a good idea, can’t wait to try it out.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:10 am
This is a good tip, at least it gets the spams off your back. Please how do i now create my own Base Name with specific keywords? Thanks
October 24th, 2008 at 11:43 am
So, what happens if Widgets.com want to send you important stuff about your order? Or when you order again, you’ll have to keep changing email addresses (if you remember to do that when placing another order), and also Amazon on-click thingy won’t work fi they have a deleted email address.
Sounds like a a pain to me, but hey!
js
October 24th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Hi Andrew,]
I hope you are reading all these comments because it is absolutely clear if you do that we want to identify those adesses that are constantly sending us SPAM so that we can divert them to the SPAM collection folder. We used to be able to identify these addresses but no longer seem able to. Although I can see the possible use of the disposable addresses I think that this will clog up your servers much better if we can stop them getting to our prime email addresses at all and when it is your friends who give your email adress away even unintentionally the disposable email addess will not help!
October 28th, 2008 at 7:31 am
This is a rubbish solution because you can’t actually USE the substitute address.
I thought I’d use mine in groups – but when I try and add it as an email address in groups I get the cutesy ‘Ooops there’s a problem’ pop up from Yahoo.
Apparently Yahoo doesn’t recognise my address guard email address as an email address.
This whole site sucks.
October 29th, 2008 at 11:15 am
how can i stop some messages from entering my mail box because there are some mail i don’t want to receive at all.please howcan i go about it.
November 1st, 2008 at 9:34 am
i want one, how do you make one? pluis, what can you do to spam already being sent?
November 6th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Hi Andrew,
I left a comment a while back asking if AddressGuard would ever work in Ireland. I’m still getting an error when i try to set a disposable email address up? The page i get says something about an Error Code 6. any ideas??
Thanks for the help
—-
Hi Michael,
Yes, I remember your comment. I have opened a ticket for the issue, and hope to have it resolved in the not too distant future. For the time being however, you will not be able to use Addressguard.
Thanks for your patience.
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team