Disposable email...

Occasionally I go cheap and sign up for the free samples that are all over the web. A lot of them ask for an email address. A lot of those are vacuums used to collect spam destinations. Some sites entice you into giving them the email address by saying they'll send you a link with the document or site you're looking for. I don't care about receiving "physical mail spam," and although Google does a great job of filtering out the spam from my email, why tempt fate. For those sites -- Mailinator to the rescue!

Mailinator is a (keeping with the theme) free site that allows you to make it up as you go along. You don't need to register ahead of time. You don't need to worry about conflicting with an address that someone else is already using. Just use anyusernameyouwant@mailinator next time you need to enter an address when you don't want to use your own. Then head on over to Mailinator and type in anyusenameyouwant and read the mail being sent. Read it quickly though, because after a couple of hours the mail is automatically deleted - long enough for you to get the email or link you need without ever receiving any spam (attributed to that site anyway...)

Beware, that if someone else has already used that email address in the past, it may already be receiving spam that is "not intended for little eyes."