Create Fake Email Accounts to Register on Websites With ‘Burner Emails’ Extension
Chrome and Firefox: There are many reasons why you might not provide your real email address when registering with a site or service. Maybe you really love privacy; or, more likely, you simply hate spam and believe that the fewer places know your real email address, the better.
You can use multiple sites to generate disposable email addresses , and you can even try the old ” add plus or dot ” trick in services like Gmail to create a “fake” email address that is always redirected to your real one. The problem with the first approach is that such email addresses do not last forever – this is not very useful if, for example, you want to receive a brand newsletter, but do not want to include your real email address when registering.
The second approach is useful, but not much. You will still receive spam in your inbox if a third party sells your changed email address, and you still have to create filters to control the email attack through something like “david..murphy @ lifehacker.com” instead of “[email protected]”.
That’s why I was thrilled to stumble upon the Burner Emails extension for Chrome and Firefox , which makes it incredibly easy to create (and manage!) Fake email accounts that are forwarded to your real address. I hardly need to explain how the extension works given how easy it is to use, but here’s the thing: Install the extension and create an account with your real email address. This is most of the work.
Now, if you go to a site that asks for your email address to create an account, you should see a small black flame icon in your text input panel. Click on it and the email address field will be automatically filled in with a new unique address. Use this when registering on the site and any email the site sends to it will automatically be redirected to your real email address.
To manage your tiny army of email addresses – since the extension can generate new email addresses for each service, if you want – just click on its icon in the main browser window. You can temporarily disable your email address or delete it entirely if you receive too many messages and don’t trust the sender to exclude you from their lists. Your choice.
While you cannot rename different email addresses to make them easier to find, any address that Burner Emails makes on your behalf must include the name of the site somewhere. And if you want more personalized email addresses, you can always use the web-based Burner Emails tool and create your own. It’s just a little slower to do it than using a super-friendly browser extension.