Create A Simple, Temporary Travel Email Account

June 30, 2008 by Anil P.  
Filed under Security, Tech

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Hi and welcome to my adventure around the world! You can keep up with me via email updates or subscribe to my RSS feed as I travel to every country on Earth.

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Stay in touch with your friends and family without jeopardizing the information in your email account by setting up a temporary travel account.

There are several free and quick ways to do this without having to create a huge number of additional accounts.

Create A Travel Email Account – Open a new email account with your current provider.? The new account should be your regular email address with “trav” at the end of it (i.e. “[email protected]” becomes “[email protected]”).

• Hotmail and Yahoo - These two email providers don’t have forwarding capabilities, but the free download GetMail can do it for you. Have all of your emails forwarded to the new account to protect your privacy abroad.

Set up a vacation response (Gmail can do this too) telling your friends and family that you’re out traveling and to contact your ‘trav’ address.

• Gmail - Forwarding capabilities are built it as well strong filtering capabilities (Settings > Filters).

In your primary account setup a filter for any words, people, or businesses you don’t want to be bothered by while on vacation. Have only the email you want delivered to your “trav” account forwarded.

• You can also create a disposable Gmail address without having to change your own. Meet a cute guy at a club, want to organize your travel plans, or protect yourself from Travelocity spam?

Say your Gmail address is “[email protected]”. You can give out the mail “[email protected]” or “[email protected]” for example. They’ll all be delivered to “[email protected]” but the To: field will still contain the “+trav” or “+travelocity”.

• Use A Temporary Email Service - The top choice, Mailinator, doesn’t require registration. Here are 20 other good disposable email services.

Make sure to use a completely different password for any travel email account. Internet cafes are shady places, and unknown wireless connections are easy places to get your account hacked. A temporary travel account using one of the many methods above will help insulate the damaged caused by hackers.

Anyone can read your emails over the Internet and lots of Internet cafe computers have keystroke loggers to steal passwords. Also, many conservative (and liberal) governments monitor email communications which could get you in trouble if they don’t like what you are saying or reading.

[photo by: Ross Mayfield]