Using Yahoo mail disposable email addresses

Molehusband

I have a Yahoo email account. In addition to giving me a main email address, eg xxxx @yahoo.com, it also allows me to generate disposable email addresses. I started using this feature a few years ago. Each disposable email address starts with a base name (or nickname, the same for all disposable addresses that you generate) and you follow it with the desired characters to generate the full email address for your @yahoo.com account. So in my case, when I started this journey I generated a disposable address base name for myself, let's call it:"nickn". So this results in all my disposable addresses being of the form "nick-xxx" where xxx is my chosen characters followed by @yahoo.com to make the full address.

My question is simple: I no longer want to use the disposable base name "nickn" and wish to change it to something else. I can't find a way of changing it. I've checked with the "Help" but no luck. Any suggestions?

flaneurs_lobster

Is this disposable email address functionality part of the paid-for Yahoo Mail (Yahoo Mail Pro) product? Can't see it in my cheapo free version.

What makes these email addresses disposable? Can they be replied to? Do they self-destruct after a month?

Molehusband

flaneurs_lobster said:

Is this disposable email address functionality part of the paid-for Yahoo Mail (Yahoo Mail Pro) product? Can't see it in my cheapo free version.

What makes these email addresses disposable? Can they be replied to? Do they self-destruct after a month?

Nope, mine is the freebie standard Yahoo mail. Go to settings -> more settings -> mailboxes and scroll down to Disposable email address where (in my account anyway) it shows you can generate up to 500 disposable addresses. Hand them out to all and sundry. If one starts receiving spam you can delete it and the spamming stops instantly. I've been using disposable email addresses for many years and get practically no spam at all during the year.

Neil_Jones

Much like a lot of Yahoo email features, a lot depends on the age of your account and its type.

Disposable email addresses became a "perk" of Yahoo Mail Plus unless you have them already because your account is old enough:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN28815.html

I believe if you have a yahoo.co.uk address as a free email address you get the dispossable email.  If you only have a .com (which is the only option now with new email accounts) you don't get disposable mail.

Molehusband

Neil_Jones said:

Much like a lot of Yahoo email features, a lot depends on the age of your account and its type.

I've had my freebie @yahoo.com address since 1998 and it's still up and running today along with the disposable address feature. It's just the base name I'm trying to change.

flaneurs_lobster

Nope, are you using the browser version?

Molehusband

flaneurs_lobster said:

Nope, are you using the browser version?

I'm not sure that I understand your question. My @yahoo.com account is just like any other normal email: can use browser, email client, mobile device etc, with 1TB of available storage. Whatever way other normal email can be used is available to me also. How does that differ from your Yahoo account?

flaneurs_lobster

See @Neil_Jones reply above, I just wondered if the reason I couldn't see the functions that you can was a different interface. It seems not.

Molehusband

Neil_Jones said:

Disposable email addresses became a "perk" of Yahoo Mail Plus unless you have them already because your account is old enough:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN28815.html

I believe if you have a yahoo.co.uk address as a free email address you get the dispossable email.  If you only have a .com (which is the only option now with new email accounts) you don't get disposable mail.

Thanks for the link. Although searching Yahoo Help didn't give me the answer my question, I followed your link and selected:
Create a disposable email address, item 4 about selecting base name tells us:
IMPORTANT: it can't be changed.
So thanks for pointing me to this hidden answer.

From what you say, Yahoo now no longer offers the disposable email facility to new freebie users, so I'd best stick with what I've got!

moneysaver1978

While this may not answer your question directly but if you have an iPhone/iCloud, you can get free disposable email accounts https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/icloud/mm6b1a490a/icloud and allows you to customise the label or name at any time

Molehusband

moneysaver1978 said:

While this may not answer your question directly but if you have an iPhone/iCloud, you can get free disposable email accounts https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/icloud/mm6b1a490a/icloud and allows you to customise the label or name at any time

Thanks for your input. Unfortunately I don't have an iPhone or other Apple products. I do have an account with https://www.spamex.com/ which is quite good. One problem with them is in respect of sending outgoing email. You appear only to be able to use their web interface for sending and not an email client, which I find a nuisance. If anyone knows of a way of using an email client to send outgoing email from a spamex address I'll be very interested.

I've recently discovered that free Hotmail/Outlook also offers a limited service which they don't promote as "disposable" but can be used similarly to disposable. The bad news is that you can only have a total of 10 such "disposable" addresses and you can only create 2 of them at a time.

For me using disposable email addresses is the best way of tackling spam. I find it far preferable to the "spam filtering" that most email providers offer. In my experience too many genuine emails can be ditched by these filters and thereby may cause possible loss of important emails.

If anyone one else knows of other disposable email providers please feel free to comment on them.