How to Identify Disposable Email Addresses?

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When we talk about the types of email addresses that can hugely affect your email marketing, the most used email addresses are disposable emails. So what are these emails and how to identify disposable email addresses? We are here to answer these questions only. But that’s not it, we will also try to take a thorough look over the disposable or temporary email addresses to understand why they are used so widely. 

Let’s start with understanding what these temporary email addresses are. 

What are Disposable Email Addresses?

Disposable email addresses can be defined as a temporary email address that can be used for a specific period. There are plenty of websites that help in generating these temporary email addresses. The major reason these email addresses are so widely used is that they allow users to proceed with their sign-ups without providing their email addresses. These emails are generally used for certain purposes like sign-ups, account verification, etc. where the website is asking for a one-time email address. 

On one hand, where these email addresses offer privacy on the user’s end, they are very disadvantageous for email marketers and business organizations. As these disposable emails are only valid for a short time, they get stored in the email lists and result in increasing the costs and resources of the organizations. To resolve this, many users and organizations are always concerned about how to identify disposable email addresses. 

That’s why it becomes highly necessary for the users to validate and filter out these disposable email addresses to save time and resources for the organization. Let’s take a look at the other purposes these email addresses are used for. 

Why are the Disposable Email Addresses Used?

There are numerous reasons for the high use of temporary email addresses. These email addresses are used for both ethical and unethical activities. We will now take a look at the uses of email addresses to understand and learn how to identify disposable email addresses to safeguard ourselves from these kinds of email addresses. 

For Short-Time Usage: When a user wishes to sign up at any website only for one-time use, they get these disposable email addresses generated and use them for the same purposes. This is one of the most common uses of the temporary email addresses. 

For Development and Testing Purposes: When working on any new project, the developers tend to use disposable email addresses to test their applications. These email addresses allow them to successfully test the website or application without using or flooding their email addresses for testing purposes. 

To Bypass the Verification Process: There are some situations where a user is trying to access a website or application that requires a verification email. So to get through the verification process only, these users create temporary email addresses making the organizations worry about how to identify disposable email addresses.

For Fraud and Other Illicit Activities: Not in the usual cases, but one of the uses of the disposable email addresses for fraud or cyberattacks. For example, attackers use these email addresses to create multiple fake accounts for spamming online platforms with wrong or bad reviews. Additionally, these email addresses can be used for phishing scams and other cyber attacks. 

Now we know about the uses of these temporary email addresses. However, there are different types of disposable email addresses. And, identifying the temporary email address can become easier if we are aware of which type of disposable email address we are dealing with. 

Also Read: A thorough guide on How to Check Valid Email Address easily.

Types of Disposable Email Addresses

There are different types of disposable email addresses. Each type has its specific functionalities and purposes. We will now take a look at these types to answer how to identify disposable email addresses in a better way.

The first type of disposable email address we will discuss is the Forwarding Email Address. These email addresses are linked to your primary email address. Any email you receive on the disposable email address will be forwarded to your primary email address.  

The next disposable email address type is the Temporary Email Address. As the name suggests, these email addresses are used for only a specific period and expire after the set time or after receiving the set amount of emails.

The third type is the Anonymous Email Address. The purpose of this type of email address is to conceal the user’s identity. Users can generate these email addresses randomly with unique and random domains. 

Then there is the Catch-all Email Address. The use of these email addresses is to receive all emails sent to a specific domain.  

Now we have the Self-Destructing Disposable Email Addresses. And by name only we can figure out that these email addresses delete themselves after sending or receiving a specific number of emails. 

As we can see all these email addresses have different yet similar functionalities. As there are different types of disposable email addresses, it becomes highly important to understand and get an efficient solution to how to identify disposable email addresses. Let’s now proceed with the solutions to resolve this issue for the users more simply and efficiently.

Methods For Identifying Disposable Email Addresses 

There are various ways to identify disposable email addresses. We will learn these ways one by one to easily understand the identification process. Here are the methods that can help you with disposable email address verification. 

Method – 1 By Checking the Email Address Domain

The first solution for how to identify disposable email addresses is to check the domain part of the email address. The disposable or temporary email addresses use specific domains, and these domains can help the users to easily filter out the temporary email addresses.  

Some examples of temporary email address domains are hello@temp.com or fake@disposable.com. [The domain names used here are just for example purposes]

Here, if you look closely, the part after ‘@’ has a different and unique domain. That’s how you can figure out the disposable email addresses by checking the domain name. 

Method – 2 Check the Email Address Pattern

The most common thing in most of the disposable email addresses is the random pattern in the email address. The temporary email addresses often have a mix of numbers and alphabets which makes it a lot easier for the users to resolve how to identify disposable email addresses from the email list. 

Genuine email addresses use a person’s name, a company name, or anything that makes sense. However, the disposable email addresses use a gibberish pattern like ab2cd4@temp.com. [Here you can see the email address doesn’t make much sense.] 

If you come across any email address that looks like this, it is a disposable email address. 

Method – 3 Check the Email Address’s Time Limit

The disposable emails are generally valid for only a specific time. After the set time of these email addresses, they expire. Some of these temporary email addresses are only valid for a maximum of 10 minutes. The major use of these email addresses is for one-time verifications or signups. After the signup, these email addresses are not much used again. So one solution to the concern of how to identify disposable email addresses is by checking the time limit of the email address. 

Method – 4 By Keeping Track of User’s Behavior 

As the whole concept of disposable email addresses revolves around one-time usage, these email addresses are for one-time purposes only. By keeping track of the email address frequency, one can fix how to identify disposable email addresses issues easily. If the email address does not have a high usage frequency, then it is a disposable email address.

Method – 5 By Checking the Domain’s Reputation

Disposable email addresses highly use domain names that are invalid, fake, or have low to no reputation over the internet. If you come across a suspicious email address that you are not sure about, you can check its domain reputation. You can always resolve how to identify disposable email addresses by checking the domain authenticity. With the help of Google or any search engine, you can easily figure out the disposable or temporary email addresses. 

With these methods, you can easily check for the authenticity of the email addresses. And also identify which email addresses are disposable or temporary. 

Conclusion

In email marketing, disposable/temporary email addresses become a huge factor in the loss of resources as well as time. And the major concern it raises among the users is how to identify disposable email addresses. With the help of this article, we have tried to understand thoroughly about disposable email addresses. And also the ways to identify these email addresses efficiently.