It’s been almost two years since we last caught up with 33Mail, the online service that helps you beat email spam by giving you disposable email addresses.
Just to recap, 33Mail provides ‘alias’ email addresses for users to include in online forms or anywhere they feel giving out a real address may attract unsolicited emails further down the line. While 33Mail does redirect all ‘alias’ emails to your real address, one of the ‘flaws’ thus far has been if you choose to respond to an email you receive, there was no way to continue to conceal your true email address. This has now been remedied.
33Mail: Hide from spammers
33Mail recently rolled out a much-needed update to its interface (33Mail “puts practicality way ahead of beauty” we noted in our previous coverage), but it’s the anonymous email replies feature that’s perhaps the most notable development.
In a nutshell, it means users can now communicate back-and-forth with anyone – it could be related to an advert they placed for a new room-mate, an old bike they’re trying to sell through the classifieds or, indeed, any company they believe could place them on a marketing list.
Once you’ve signed up for a 33Mail account, you can drag a bookmarklet to your browser and it will automatically create an alias for you specific to the website you’re on. The format defaults to: spamsite.com@username.33Mail.com.
But the beauty of 33Mail is you can decide on any alias you want, and the first time someone responds to it by email, the address is created. So, say you’re looking for someone to fill your spare room, you can just pluck something like ‘staywithme@username.33Mail.com’ out of thin air and place it in your ad – you don’t have to physically create anything.
For the time-being, anonymous replies are still technically in beta and it’s free for all users, though it seems likely that this will eventually only be available to premium users.
Free users get a 10MB monthly bandwidth limit, which equates to around 500 emails a month. Premium users, however, pay $12 a year and get a 50MB monthly bandwidth limit and the option to buy customized domain names.
For now, anyone can enable the anonymous reply setting via ‘Account Info’, where they can also set any name for the recipient to see when they respond – this could be their real name, a made-up name or whatever they want.
The more sites you sign-up to using a 33Mail alias, the more will be displayed in your dashboard, and you can block any address at any point simply by hitting the ‘block’ button.
When you receive an email to an alias, 33Mail relays it through to your real address, and when you reply it looks as though it’s being sent from your real address too, but 33Mail works its magic to hide it from the recipient.
It’s a great idea for sure, one that’s similar in concept to SquadMail, which is a little bit like Dropbox for email, in that it lets you create and share temporary (or permanent) email folders, each with their own unique SquadMail-branded email handle.
33Mail says it now forwards almost 250,000 emails per month to its users, though of course this gives no indication as to the popularity of the service on the whole. That said, we’re told that it’s adding around 1,000 new users each month.
The new 33Mail is available to use on the Web now.
➤ 33Mail
Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock
Original link:
33Mail now helps you beat spammers by responding anonymously via email aliases
via Arne Ruhnau News http://arneruhnau.com/33mail-now-helps-you-beat-spammers-by-responding-anonymously-via-email-aliases/
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