Many interesting websites require users to sign up with their email address.

Once we’re signed up, however, the websites send notifications, ads or spam, and our inbox fills with junk mail. Of course this is annoying, but Guerrilla Mail (www.guerrillamail.com) can help.

Guerrilla Mail gives people a temporary email account without needing to register. As soon as you open the website, you get a temporary account with a random address.

If you don’t care about the random email address and you accept it, you can copy the address by selecting “copy to clipboard”. If you want to change the name, you can quit the account by selecting “forget me”.

A new email address can be set after clicking on “forget me”, and there is no indicated character limitation.

You can receive and open all the emails sent to your new inbox, including a confirmation link from any website. To test whether Guerrilla Mail really works, I made accounts on Stumble Upon, Twitter and Facebook using this email address.

The confirmation links reached my Guerilla Mail inbox, and I had no trouble opening the link. However, pictures sent through the email are blocked. Meanwhile, I also sent 11 spam messages, and none of them reached my inbox.

Guerrilla Email has a brief life span as the email account expires after one hour. However, it can be reactivated by entering the same email address. Emails stored in the inbox in the last hour will appear again. But after an hour, emails in the inbox will be gone.

By the way, the site lets you play Tetris while you await messages for your inbox.

Unfortunately, only those who subscribe to Guerrilla Mail will be able to forward emails, although there is no minimum payment for subscription.

The funny thing is, you will receive different “inspirational” messages when you enter the amount you want to pay. Basically, the message is meant to persuade you to give more money for your membership.

Once you have subscribed, you can set a password and forward emails. This will make your email secure. Without a subscription (meaning payment), everyone can use your email address and view your inbox.

Thus, Guerrilla Mail is not for free. The question is: If we can make an email account for free, why would I subscribe Guerrilla Mail?

It is more useful and economical to make email account from other websites such as Yahoo or Hotmail. You don’t need to pay for creating an account. Also, you can forward important message to your colleagues, and no one can access your account without the password.

For some people, creating several accounts has become a habit. They have different email addresses for work and for personal matters. You could give your email account for work to your colleagues and personal email account to your friends. It is good to create an account to give to people you don’t know or to websites you don’t trust.

Guerrilla Mail only helps people who are in a hurry. It doesn’t need registration.

You can just open the page and directly begin using the random email address. You don’t need to login to view your inbox.

So, maybe when you meet an untrustworthy person or website while you are in a hurry, you could open Guerrilla Mail, copy the random address then give it to them. In a short time you could see what the person or website sent to you.

In the end, Guerrilla Mail is really only for one-hour use.

The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post

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