Using Disposable Addresses

Getting Started With AddressGuard

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 AddressGuard is your answer!

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AddressGuard lets you 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.

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

A couple other AddressGuard 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 only the disposable address in the From information, not your name.

• You can sort messages sent to your disposable addresses into folders of your choice, much like using filters. Let’s say that you want all the email related to your child’s school to automatically go in the School folder. Just create a disposable address to give to the school and specify in AddressGuard that any messages sent to that address should be routed into the School folder. (If you don’t specify a folder, Yahoo! Mail automatically delivers the messages to your Inbox.)

To get started with AddressGuard, specify your base name and an initial disposable address.

Here’s How

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

2. Select Mail Options from the Options menu.

   

   The General options page appears.

3. On the left side of the mail options page, select the Spam option.

   

4. Click the Set up a disposable address link in the Disposable Addresses section of the Spam options page.

   

   If this is the first time that you’ve used AddressGuard, the AddressGuard introductory page appears. Otherwise, the regular AddressGuard page appears.

5. Click the Get Started Now button.

   The first AddressGuard setup page appears.

   Note: All the disposable addresses that you create in AddressGuard 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 jacaranda9441 as your base name, you can create jacaranda9441-sneakerstore@yahoo.com, jacaranda9441-FlyHighAirline@yahoo.com, and so on. You can create new addresses instantly, whenever you need them, from either the Mail Options page or from the Yahoo! Toolbar.

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

   

   AddressGuard checks whether or not the base name you’ve typed is available. If it’s not available, AddressGuard directs you to choose another base name.

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

7. Confirm that you want to use the available base name, or specify another base name by clicking the Continue button.

   

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

8. Type a keyword to use with your base name, then click the Continue button.

   

9. Specify your preferences for this disposable address, then click the Set Up AddressGuard button to finish the setup process.

   Tip: Learn more about disposable address preferences here.

 

Next:
Creating Disposable Addresses

What’s Next

On the final AddressGuard setup page, you can add other disposable addresses.

You can also return to AddressGuard later to create additional disposable addresses whenever you need them.