Getting married? Having a baby? Your life is about to change forever, and we're not just talking about your growing family. Welcome to a lifetime of spam emails. Every vendor or planner you contact, store you register for, or contest you enter is going to use and possibly sell your contact information...unless you were smart and created a throwaway email account.
You would think that wedding planning emails would stop after the date has passed, but most of the time, the vendors and stores you communicate with don't really keep tabs on each individual subscriber. And even worse, some nefarious companies are known to sell their extensive contact lists to interested parties; the wedding emails will quickly turn into non-stop newlywed-centric sales pitches.
That's why we love this tip from Reddit Life Pro Tips, which suggests that brides- or grooms-to-be create a special email just to give to wedding vendors. After the wedding is over, you can delete and forget about your smithwedding@gmail.com account and rest easy knowing spam from bridal boutiques and florists isn't clogging up your main inbox.
But the wedding email tip opens up a world of possibilities. You can use disposable contact information for any major event in your life where you know you'll be handing out your information a lot—like narrowing down colleges, car shopping, house hunting, job hunting or preparing for a new baby. And you don't have to stop at an email address.
If you're going to be giving out your phone number a lot, sign up for a free Google Voice number. Set your Google Voice account to forward to your cell, and give out your new number to contacts and vendors. You can set it to do things like send calls straight to voicemail, or even ban phone numbers (like those scam honeymoon offers). Then when the wedding's over or the baby's born, change your Voice settings and enjoy the peace and quiet that comes with completely avoiding spam calls.
Or, use an app like Burner ($1.99, iOS) that lets you create several forwarding phone numbers (it even masks your outgoing number on others' caller IDs) and "burn" them for good with a single touch.
Have you ever used a throwaway email or phone number? Do you have any email tricks that helped you through a major event? Shre your stories in the comments!
(Images: Shutterstock, Gmail, Burner)
Must-See Small Cool Homes: Week Two
Beth's Romantic & Retro Residence
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Shaw's Original Fir...
How To Make Perfect Bacon in the Oven
How To Cook Tender, Chewy Wheat Berries on the Stovetop
I used to try to have a separate mail and "spam mail" account, but -- oddly enough -- I often don't know what to categorize as what. For example, I'm on my local Freecycle distribution, which is really helpful if I'm in the "mood" for freecycling and otherwise a constant stream of spam.
Progressively, I've become more a fan of having e-mail aliases. In gmail, if your normal address is normal@gmail.com, you can have people send you things to normal+aliasnamehere@gmail.com. Substitute anything under <aliasnamehere> and it'll still get to you, but you can auto-label it or auto-filter it into trash, what have you. Exchange online offers custom aliases, e.g., you can be normal@outlook.com and then have an alias as regular@outlook.com (where regular@outlook.com would just forward to normal).
For really disposable e-mails, e.g., you took out a personality test online and want to know the result but really don't know if they're just going to spam you for ever and ever, I use a service like mailinator. Just create any e-mail addresses ending in @mailinator.com. Then enter that address at mailinator to get your e-mail. Keep in mind that anyone can see that e-mail (if they just know the address), so this really isn't intended for anything private at all.
Gmail has a very good built in SPAM filter. And then I just create filters for emails that I don't want to go into my Inbox. Then if I don't need them after a while, I just unsubscribe from the email. But the Gmail Filters are awesome. I use them for all kinds of different purposes.
Did you read this on reddit's Life Pro-Tips a few days ago..?
I'm a convention planner and I created a google voice account a few years ago to give to clients that ask for my cell number before the event. I hate giving them my personal cell because then they have free reign to call me on my off hours. I turn the number off after the event and set it up to forward to my office phone. It keeps them happy because they think they can get a hold of me anytime and it keeps me happy because they really can't.
I've also started to use it for any time that I really don't want to give my number out. The spam filters and blocking calls have been great.