Tempalias

We've all been there. You're interested in a website or a download, but the site wants your email address before letting you near the goods. You want access, but you're not quite sure you want it enough to hand over the information.

The site asks you to supply an email address, and follow up with confirmation, and perhaps a login and password. It's hard to avoid the process or any of the steps, but the part that really annoys me is the need to supply my email address to yet another unknown party.

But what if you could instead supply a temporary email address that was forwarded to your own? And then define either a maximum number of emails to forward, or a maximum period of time for which that would happen? This would stop you from receiving spam email to your regular email account. That's what "tempalias" will do - and do it very nicely.

A word of caution though. Remember that the whole reason you would go through this is that you don't want to supply your email address to someone you might not trust. You need to be comfortable tempalias is a safe place to hand over that address. I'm relaxed about it, but you should always make your own decisions on security, and not just take my word. Tempalias has more so say about the subject.

Remember also that if it turns out that you want to have an ongoing relationship with the website then you will need to return and sign up with your real email address. Tempalias has commitment issues, and won't phone you back the next day, or at least not the next month.