Anyone who builds their customer file by offering a free service in exchange for a valid e-mail address should block all registrants from 10MinuteMail.com.
The site offers fake e-mail addresses that—as the name suggests—expire after 10 minutes. As a result, the 10MinuteEmail.com user can supply the address for registration on a Web site that offers some free service, reply to any confirmation e-mail that may come from the site. The subscriber is assured no spam will arrive as a result of registering for whatever it is the site offers because after 10 minutes, poof!, the address is gone.
Great. It apparently doesn’t occur to these people that if they’ve registered for it, it isn’t spam.
But hey, no big deal, right? It’s just a way for people to avoid getting e-mail they don’t want.
After all, the people behind, say, the white paper offered in exchange for an e-mail address, are all independently wealthy, work for free, and have no bills to pay. Hell, most information workers simply live to create free stuff for leaches who just happen to know how to write code.
And those reporters who work odd hours for news sites: They don’t need raises either, right? If their publisher tries to use subscriber registrations to increase revenue, well, too bad.
After all, we live in the magical Internet-la-la-head land where “information wants to be free.” Phew. Lost our heads for a minute there, or maybe we should say 10 minutes.
