Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Hide Your Real Email Address When You Do Web Signups With NotSharingMy.Info


Email addresses are one of the hottest commodities on the web. Believe it or not, some people are willing to pay for your address. So it’s a bit strange that most of us absentmindedly give away our address to every web stranger who asks.

To those who are concerned about privacy, the web is a dangerous place. Everywhere you turn, everybody is asking you to fill in your personal information. At some level, you need to protect yourself, and not use your real email address to fill in every registration form you come across. You need an email anonymizer or email forwarding service, along the lines of NotSharingMy.Info.

In Less Than 30 Seconds

Email anonymizers are web services that will give you a new email address to use and forward all the emails you receive at that anonymous address to your real address. Every time the incoming mails get out of control, you can easily ditch the anonymous address and create a new one. But why would anyone use these services if you can do the same thing using any normal webmail service? You can easily create a new address and set that address to forward every incoming mail to your main address.

The main reason is time. Creating a new email address and going through the settings to forward all the mails takes time and effort. That’s a lot of energy wasted if you are going to ditch the address soon afterwards. Using email anonymizer services, everything is done in a snap. NotSharingMy.Info promises that the process will take less than 30 seconds.

  • Start by typing in your real email address. Then click the “Get an obscure email” button.

01a create new

  • You’ll get your new email address in less than 5 seconds. You can use your anonymous email to register for web services that you want to try, or for other occasions where you don’t want to reveal your real address.

01b new address

Customize The Address

The new address looks like this xxxxx@notsharingmy.info, where xxxxx is a randomly generated code. But NotSharingMy.Info allows you to customize the xxxxx with anything you want if you spread the word about this service to at least three of your friends.

  • Pick one of the supported web messaging platforms to start spreading the news.

01c refer 3

  • Then allow access so they can access your address book, and pick three or more names from the list.

01d asking permission

  • Click “Invite” to start recommending the service to your friends.

01f invite

  • A customization form will appear, asking you to provide your primary email address and your desired name for the “@NotSharingMy.info” address.

01g custom form

More Tools

NotSharingMy.Info provides more tools you can use. If you go to the lower part of the page, you’ll see links to these tools.

02a additional tools

The bookmarklet tool will help you quickly anonymize your address. Drag the bookmarklet button to your browser’s bookmark bar to install it.

02b drag bookmarklet

Give the bookmarklet a name, click “OK” and you are ready to go.

02c name bookmark

Click the bookmarklet every time you fill in your email address in any web form. Your email address will automatically be replaced by a randomized and anonymous address.

The NotSharingMy.Info service is also available as a Chrome extension. After you install and activate the extension, a new button will appear next to the address bar. This button has a similar function to the bookmarklet.

02e chrome ext

If you ever wish to stop your anonymous email from forwarding incoming emails to your real mailbox, all you have to do is just cancel the address via the “Cancel forwarding” link.

02i cancel forwarding

Write down the anonymous address in the field provided, click “Cancel forwarding“, and you are free from the hassle.

02j cancel forwarding

Do you think you can live happily ever after without the need to anonymize your email address? Have you tried NotSharingMy.Info? What do you think about the service? Share your thoughts using the comment below.

Don’t forget to check out our other similar articles: How To Protect Your Email and Still Subscribe To Everything, 5 Ways to Protect & Hide Your Email to Stop Receiving Spam, and How To Send Completely Anonymous Emails.

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