E-Mail addresses are today’s de facto communication method. It’s how we keep in touch with friends and co-workers it is important that your e-mail address says what you want it to say about you. Reading something more into a e-mail address is something we all do, if you see an @yahoo.com address on a business card it better be from someone who works at Yahoo.

Below is how I handle e-mail it may not be the best way but it has worked well for me for several years. This is how you can have a nearly unlimited number of e-mail address and only ever have to check one.

1. Get a domain name. I use 1and1 for all the hosting I need and don’t have means to do at home. You can get your domain name and e-mail forwarding and thats is all you need for this. Starting at $1 a month (50% off for the first 3 months). I even host this site and many others at 1and1. I have a “my first and last name.com” and a nice domain name with my family name in it specifically for e-mail reasons.
2. Set up a master account. The address is unimportant since you wont be giving it out to anyone, but what is important is the interface. I prefer a Gmail account, it is free, has a wonderful interface and uses its massive member database to detect spam e-mail amazingly well. With a nearly limitless number of e-mail addresses pointed at your master address a powerful spam filter is important. I hardly hear a whisper of spam on my master account.
3. Set up your forwards. In the 1and1 control panel (as with most other providers) you can set up a *@DomainName.com e-mail address to forward to your master e-mail address. This will send all mail to that domain to the master account.
4. Set up your FROM address. Gmail will allow you to setup multiple “Send As” addresses. Go to Settings>Accounts>Send Mail As. I set up an Admin@ Webmaster@ me@ and so on for the various domains. So I can send mail as any prefix on a domain I own that I want to at that time.

This entire process should take no more than an hour and should be very easy to do.

Whats the upside?

• Being able to tell anyone your e-mail address is TheirName@YourName.com is cool and gets fun looks. People tend to remember that kind of thing.
• Giving a specific address to a site you register for allows you to keep track of who sold you out to a spam list. If a forum asks you to register you can give it the address ForumName@YourName.com and be able to back that up with an authorization response.
• If a specific address starts getting an abundance of unblocked spam you can always set up a filter to block that address.

If you don’t have the desire to go through the above, services like 10 Minute Mail and BugMeNot offer a quick, easy and perfectly acceptable solution to the spam address problem. But I like my way a lot better.