An email address for people you don’t want to hear from.

A Mailinator.com email address is the 21st century equivalent of the the fake phone numbers that women used to (still do?) give out in bars. Only better: It’s fake if you want fake, and real if you want real.

Every website in the universe wants your email address. Some want to spam you, some want to sell your address to spammers, and still others want to sell it to data aggregators that can create a chillingly accurate analysis of your habits and your psychological makeup. Maybe more accurate than you would actually like anybody to have.

The solution is easy, fast, legal and free: “Make stuff up.” Unless you happen to be under oath or are filling out legal documents, there’s absolutely no reason you have to give out any real personal information to anybody.

The next time a website wants to “verify your email address”. Just make one up using any of the free mailinator domains; likepie@bobmail.info, spamspamspamspam@mailinator.com, they’re all good. Use anything you like.

To check your email, just go to mailinator.com, enter the email address you just made up and your mail will be waiting for you!

Mailinator has no setup and nothing to “verify”. Just think up an address, use it, and your mail will be waiting for you. If you want to keep using it, you can check your mail whenever you want. If you don’t want it anymore, just ignore it. Nothing gets any easier than that.

Mailinator is one of my favorite websites. It’s simple, clean, easy and does a single thing really well, and doesn’t charge a penny. It’s really hard to beat that combination.