Anti-Spam App for Your iPhone (and Your PC, Too)

There are numerous free websites that let you create temporary email addresses. Why would you want a temporary email address? There are a lot of reasons: Many websites and all online stores require a valid email address for registration or purchases. If you don't want to be on that website's permanent email list, using an email address that expires in a few hours or days can be a godsend. Some of these services will forward email that comes to your temporary address to your regular email address.

Here are some of the free, temporary email address services:

Mailinator
GuerillaMail
TempEMail

You can create a temporary email address directly from your smartphone, too. For the iPhone, MeltMail is a great app. Armed with MeltMail, you'll never have to give out your real email address again while living your mobile life.

WMATA Spam Problem Fixed

The Washington Metropolitan Transit Area Authority has fixed its spam problem. Commuters who subscribe to WMATA's email alerts received fradulent messages containing links to a non-WMATA website. And if you clicked on that nefarious link, well, you can imagine what bad things might happen. (You can subscribe to the alerts through WMATA's website.) Here is the spam update from WMATA:

Metro has resolved a problem with its e-Alert notification system with some subscribers who received spam emails instead of service disruption reports from Metro since Sunday, August 29.