Cloaked Email Address
How Can You Fight Ezine Monitoring?
Sometimes you may wish to subscribe to an ezine even though it does not respect Ezine Privacy.
One way to do this is with a Cloaked Email Address.
What is a Cloaked Email Address?
A Cloaked Email Address is an address that gets mail to you but which isn't the normal address you use.
Any technique which "hides" your real email address will work. The idea is to prevent the owner of the list from knowing who you really are when you open your emails.
You may not be able to stop them from tracking your open activity. But you can stop them from knowing "who you are".
NameCheap.com
One of my favorite techniques for creating Cloaked Email Addresses is the domain name registrar NameCheap.com.
NameCheap.com offers free email forwarding. The idea is to use this to hide your real email address.
For example, suppose that your real email address is BillyBob@ThePhoneCompany.com.
What you do is:
- Register a new domain name at NameCheap.com. Domain names are cheap. They only cost $8.88 per year here.
- Let's say you register the domain name A743.com.
- After you register the domain name, you use the NameCheap.com control panel and tell NameCheap.com to forward all email that is addressed to anything@A743.com to your real email address (BillyBob@ThePhoneCompany.com).
- Now, when you sign up for ezines, you can just make up an email address at A743.com.
- If you want, you can even code the addresses. For example, when you sign up for the Make Money Every Day ezine, you could use MakeMoneyEveryDay@A743.com and when you sign up for Weekly Garden Tips you could use WeeklyGardenTips@A743.com.
- When their form asks you for your name, just type anything there too. For example, you could put "MakeMoneyEveryDay" or "WeeklyGardenTips" as the "name". You could even use "NoneOfYourBusiness". Their systems aren't intelligent enough to figure out whether what you type is real of not.
- By using these Cloaked Email Addresses, the ezine owners will not know who you are when you open the emails.
- Of course, if you do this, be sure not to use the same email when you write the owner or buy his products or give him your name.
Resources
Own Your Own Email Address
Explains how to use NameCheap.com to create an email address you will own and can take with you.
Registration With NameCheap
Explains how to register domain names with NameCheap.
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