You see a competition on a website that you would like to sign up for, then a money off voucher for a meal out, ooh, and a free cinema trip! Isn’t the internet a wonderful place! All you need to do to get access these wonderful things is hand over your email address.
Simple! Or is it…
At this point what do you do? Do you use your regular email address and suffer the (almost inevitable) spam mail that follows after handing your email address over?
Spam is a fact of life nowadays but there are ways around it. I have a couple of tips for getting access to everything you want, without suffering the spam.
Option 1:
Use a random email address generator. If the object of your desire simply wants an email address in order to display a voucher or something similar, generate a random email address. There used to be loads about, however these days they are a bit more few and far between, I tend to use YopMail.
Option 2:
Get yourself a separate email address just to use for signing up to random websites that you only want as a one off.
Car insurance comparison sites are a great way of saving yourself money, but they insist on an email address to send your quote to, and throughout the year they will spam your email address and possibly even sell on your details, so the spam circle increases. You needn’t spend an age maintaining this email address, simply use it for what you need and only login to it when you know you have en email waiting. I tend to use hotmail as a live mail passport is always handy to have.
The very best way of dealing with spam and signups is Gmail. Google have some great ways of sorting your mail, be it through creating a variation of your email address (by adding a plus or a dot in amongst it, which will help you to identify know who has passed it on), along with named and coloured filters for various messages.
The next blog will discuss how to get the best out of Gmail…
If you have any great tips for dealing with signups, leave a comment or give us a shout on twitter.
