BugMeNot, Let Me In!
My dear friend, these are real time savers, so take time to learn to use it (don’t laugh, time-saving tricks do take time to learn, i can only help by explaining how to use them). Introducing…
1. http://www.bugmenot.com/
2. http://www.mailinator.com/
I chanced upon BugMeNot.com while browsing for projects in http://mozdev.org/ where I found the BugMeNot extension for Mozilla, which links you to the BugMeNot.com page to retrieves a pair of username and password that lets you access a password-protected page that you are browsing (those that require free registration, but you’re not interested in wasting time and effort to fill in their stupid form, and even if you do, you’ll stuff some junk into the text boxes anyway.) Here’s how it works…
Install this bookmarklet (Right click, and Add To Favourites or Bookmark This Link, call it BugMeNot!). Whenever you arrive at one of those irritating sites (site #1, site #2) telling you to “register for free in order to view the full article”, click on the bookmarklet that you just added, if the site is in the BugMeNot database, you’d see something similar to this, use the username and password to access the site. That’s it! At the time of this writing, BugMeNot claims to have 4397 sites “liberated”, HAHA!
So I was reading the FAQ on BugMeNot.com (I love reading those things!) where I found Mailinator.com - a free service that lets you conjure up any email address ending with @mailinator.com on the fly, then check for mails that arrive there. Picture this: you arrive at yet another register-before-you-download-our-free-trial site (we will then send you an email with the download link/password in it), you try to see if BugMeNot has something for you, nope. You go to the registration page, stuff in something like ihateforms@mailinator.com in the email address field, fill in asdf for the rest and submit away. Then, go to www.mailinator.com and wait for the email (Note: Mailinator FAQ says that mails are deleted every few hours.) Once you’ve done that, don’t forget to go back to BugMeNot.com to share your username and password 
At the moment, however, the BugMeNot extension really isn’t worth downloading, because it doesn’t provide much more than what you can do with the bookmarklet. Well, it does add itself to the context menu of the page you are browsing so you don’t have to search for it in the plugin folder.
July 25th, 2004 at 6:53 am
August 16th, 2004 at 11:36 am
I am using always the fake email address service from http://www.myTrashMail.com . It is the same idea as Mailinator but with additional forward and delete functions.
In my case I use myTrashMail.com for all forum signups. I also check it once a while (emails stay for a week) As soon my account get too much of spam I move on to another address.
I use myTrashMail.com daily. Its even faster than a web based login at Hotmail.
You even can make a shorcut bookmark like: http://www.mytrashmail.com/myTrashMail_inbox.aspx?email=test
August 16th, 2004 at 6:27 pm
Thanks for the tip, Greg! Yeah, I’ve found mail delivery to Mailinator rather sluggish, and so haven’t been using it much. Will try myTrashMail the next time.
October 16th, 2004 at 9:51 pm
Yes, MyTrashMail is probaly the most advanced temporary email service you can get.
December 22nd, 2004 at 2:14 am
What a splendid blog! Not often I meet recourses like yours! Go on!
April 8th, 2005 at 10:28 am
My ISP currently censors Bugmenot.com, and no, I don’t wish to switch to another ISP. Are there any copy cats of Bugmenot, as there are copy cats of Mailinator from MyTrashmail??
Please reply.
June 21st, 2005 at 6:37 am
POOKMAIL.COM sounds pretty much like mailinator