?Disposable? web accounts to keep you private online

Here, I’ve listed some excellent web sites to enhance your privacy online tenfold!  To check them out, simply click their headings.

 

Mint Email

 

 

This is a great service for those websites that force you to register before giving up the goods.  If you’d rather not give out your personal email address, simply hop on over to Mint Email, where you will receive an instant, one-time, three hour temporary email address.  Simply use that email address for the site on which you’d like to register (copy/paste for best results).  The new address is valid for three hours and, when the registration confirmation email arrives from the originating site, Mint Email will display it.  Then, simply follow the confirmation instructions of the site on which you’ve just registered.  Easy!  And, your real email addy stays private.  Just don’t close the browser  window until you’re finished.

Drop.io

This is a really powerful website for file-sharing and collaboration.  Basically, you created a “drop” for for whatever file you’d like to either share or on which you’d like to collaborate, and drop.io takes care of the rest.  First, it assigns you a permanent website address (which you can, for a fee, upgrade).  Then, you upload your file(s) and send out invitations.  Free accounts are limited to 100MB, but you may very well find yourself wanting to upgrade because of the multitudinous features drop.io provides.

Skype

 

Skype is an incredible telephony service.  While it isn’t free for the purposes of this post (you’ll have to sign up and pay for a “virtual” phone number), it’s well worth the cost.  To sign up, just head on over to skype.com and go through the process. The cost of a “Skype Out” virtual phone number is minimal:  about $.02/minute.  So, if you use it only to provide a completely anonymous telephone number for websites (or to anyone to whom you’d rather not give out your real telephone number), something like $10.00 in Skype credit will last quite a long time.  The Skype Out service’s features are vast and deep (such as free voicemail and Caller ID), and you can make free Skype-to-Skype calls, as well.  Plus, you can download their mobile application and make calls using your cell phone’s data service (check to make sure you have a data service as part of your plan before you do this, however).