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Using Disposable Addresses

Creating a Base NameCreating Disposable AddressesSending Message Using Disposable AddressesDeleting Disposable Addresses

Creating a Base Name

Consider the following case: you see an offer on the Web that sounds really interesting, but before you can check it out, you have to provide an email address. Do you really want to give out your address to some online marketer and risk getting "offers" (in other words, junk mail) in your mailbox forever? No?? Then disposable addresses are your answer!

You can create "disposable" email addresses to use whenever you don’t want to share your real Yahoo! Mail address. It lets you save your primary email address for people you know and trust, and give these disposable ones to others, such as online vendors, mailing lists, and other Internet services.

A couple other features that you’ll like:

  • When you use a disposable address to send or reply to a message, your personal name is not included in the sender information. The person who gets your email sees a name of your choosing and the disposable address in the From information.

  • You can deliver messages sent to your disposable addresses into folders of your choice. Let’s say that you want all the email related to your child’s school to automatically go in the School folder. Create a disposable address specifying the School folder as its delivery option and then give the address to your child’s school. When a message arrives with that address, Yahoo! Mail delivers it to the School folder (If you don’t specify a folder for a disposable address, Yahoo! Mail automatically delivers the messages to your Inbox.)

To get started, specify your base name and an initial disposable address. After your initial setup, you can create additional disposable addresses.

 

Here’s How

To create your base name:

You create your base name just once. After that, you add keywords to create as many as 500 unique disposable addresses.

  1. In a browser, go to Yahoo! Mail.

  2. Select Mail Options from the Options menu.

    Select Mail Options from the Options menu.

    The General options page appears.

  3. On the left side of the page, select the Disposable Addresses option.

    Select the Disposable Addresses option.

    The left side appears ready for you to create your base name.

    Note: All the disposable addresses that you create use the same simple pattern:

    yourbasename-keyword@yahoo.com

    You choose one base name (yourbasebame). Once you have the base name set, you can create up to 500 disposable addresses, each using a different keyword of your choice. For example, if you chose ja9441 as your base name, you can create ja9441-shopping@yahoo.com, ja9441-donate@yahoo.com, and so on.

  4. Type a base name of your choice, then click the Continue button.

    Your base name must begin with a letter, contain no spaces or symbols, and be different from your Yahoo! ID.

    Type a base name to use with all your disposable addresses, then click Continue.

    Tip: You can’t use your Yahoo! ID or display name for either the base name or a keyword. This prevents anyone from figuring out your real Yahoo! Mail address from your disposable addresses.

    The next form prompts you to create your first disposable address.

  5. Complete the form as explained in the next task Creating Disposable Addresses beginning with Step 3.

 

What’s Next

If any of your disposable email addresses starts receiving unwanted emails, you can delete that address from your account. Future messages sent to the deleted address bounce back to the sender instead of filling up your Yahoo! Mail account.

 

Help Topics

 
 

Words to Know

  • Base name: the first part of your disposable address, which is common to all the disposable addresses you create.
  • Display name: a personal nickname of your choosing that appears on your profile on Yahoo!; protects the privacy of your real name from people you don’t know.
  • Disposable email address: a customised email address that you create to protect your regular Yahoo! Mail address.
  • Filter: a rule that Yahoo! Mail uses to direct an incoming message to a particular folder.
  • Folder: a container that holds individual elements specific to the context; for example, email messages in Yahoo! Mail.
  • Junk mail: unsolicited email on the Internet; also called spam.
  • Keyword: the unique, second part of a disposable address.
  • Spam: unsolicited email on the Internet; also called "junk mail".
  • Spam folder: a permanent folder that SpamGuard uses to hold messages it considers spam.
  • Yahoo! ID: the name by which a person is known to all Yahoo! networks.