Do you have a special email address for websites that might send you spam? [POLL]

We’ve all had more than our fill of spammers offering to sell us Viagra, telling us that we’ve won millions in a lottery we never entered or inherited a fortune after an African dictator came to a grizzly end.

But many internet users are also nervous about handing out their email address to every website they use, fearful that they will be deluged with unwanted newsletters or – worse – that the sites will be hacked and their contact details fall into the wrong hands.

So, what do you do about this problem?

You could give a phoney email address – [email protected] is a favourite of mine (apologies if anyone owns that domain and receives messages that were intended for me) – but that won’t always work well, as some sites send an email to confirm your email address before they grant you full access.

There are even websites like 10minutemail which give…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.