How to keep your identity safe

Fed up with spam? Tired of telemarketing calls? Feelin’ paranoid about identity theft? … Here you’ll find a bunch “throwaway” web tools that can help you out.

Disposable email account

Mintemail - Instant disposable email for any ‘fishy’ registration form or sign-up. Go to mintemail.com and a random email address will be automatically generated and copied to your clipboard. You can either bookmark the location of created inbox and use it on a regular basis or always use a new one.

Highlights include: Automatic eMail verification, email forwarding, option to set custom expiry times (from 1 hour to 1 month) and more.

Disposable phone number

Numbr - This is a really good one. Basically, Numbr gives you an anonymous disposable phone number that can be set to forward all incoming calls to any provided landline or mobile number (US only). Absolutely free. It’s an ideal solution for times when you want to keep your phone private but want to list your contact number in places like classifieds listings, social networking sites, blogs ,etc.
Along with the number, you also get access to dozens of cool functionalities, i.e. forward to voicemail, ability to activate/deactivate nr. at any time, etc. Read more: Numbr - Disposable Phone Number.

Disposable login details

BugMeNot - Here you can get disposable login details (username/password) for a huge number of popular news/review/download websites that normally require users to register.

For example, let’s say you clicked on a link that points to an article on a popular media website (eg. NYT). Usually instead of landing straight on the article page you’re asked to signin or register. Maybe there is a good reason behind it, but what’s the point of signing up if that is your first and only visit to that website. When it comes to BugMeNot, it instantly gets you a number of “public” login details that can be used to access the website. It’s fast, it’s convenient and you don’t have to worry about getting spammed.

Disposable name and address generator

FakeNameGenerator - Fun tool for quickly generating fake but totally sound names and contact address. Cool part about it, not only you get to choose country of residence but can also specify what kind of name you’re looking for, i.e. Chinese, American, Indian, etc.

Disposable file sharing

File.io - Anonymous file sharing service where you can upload and share file/s (via password-protected URL) for 30 days. Once 30 day period is over, all shared files will be automatically deleted. Read More: File.io - Disposable File Sharing.