Get the emails you want while keeping your Email address private

[+Warwagon MVC]

Get the emails you want while keeping your Email address private.

When I read the news about how Plentyoffish had been hacked and all the email addresses and passwords had been stolen, the first thing that to come to mind was ?DOH?. I use Roboform, so I wasn?t concerned about anyone using my username and password in the same combination on any other website, as my password looked like gibberish and was unique to just Plentyoffish.

I have a secondary Email address that I call my spam account that I give to websites that I don?t really care about, but that still needs an email address to register. I?m sure you all have one of those.

After thinking about it, I wanted to kick myself in the ass. I thought, what I should have done / and will do from now on is give POF (Plentyoffish, and other sites) my spam address, then setup a forward filter on my spam account that would forward only the emails that come from the addresses I add to the filter onto my main address. Get the emails I want, yet keeping my primary address private.

If I had this in place before the POF database got hacked all they would have gotten is my spam email address and they could have spammed it all they, yet all the legit emails from POF would have still gotten forward to my main account. Plus, if I wanted to never receive emails from that site ever again I could just remove the filter.

So in this very brief guide I will show you how to create a Gmail forward filter. It may be common knowledge for a lot of the members here. But for the rest of you, enjoy!

1) The very first step is to create a Gmail account just for spam (If you already have one log it now. If you don?t already have one you can create it by going to www.gmail.com. (It?s Free)

2) Once you are successfully logged into your new spam account click the ?settings? link in the top right of the browser.

3) Now click the ?Forwarding and POP/IMAP? tab.

First thing we have to do is add a new forwarding address. Click the ?Add a forward address? button, and then enter your primary email address.

Once complete, Gmail will email you a conformation code that you will type into the conformation box.

Now that you have your primary address verified we can start creating some filters, but before we can do that we will need to know the email addresses of sites that send you email. So before you proceed to the next step, you may want to give some sites that you never really wanted to have your main address in the first place, your new spam address. You will also have to wait until you receive an email from them. You could always filter by name, but an email address is much more precise

Creating a Gmail Message Forward Filter.

1) Click the ?Create a filter link?

2) In the ?From? field type in the email address of the emails you wish to get forwarded.

3) Click ?next step?

4) Click the ?Forward it to:? button and select your primary email address.

5) Click ?Create Filter?

That?s it. From now on those sites only know of your spam email address but they will still get forwarded to your primary email box. Then in the future if you want to stop getting emails from then, you could try your luck at the trusty ?Unsubscribe? button, or just log back into Gmail and remove the filter.