Recently, while browsing Reddit, I came across one of the most useful tools I’ve seen: an email alias. As its name suggests, you can create alternative names for email addresses.
These email addresses are linked to your main email address. The way it works is very simple: you create an alias, which is essentially another email address, and it gets linked to your main email address. When you send an email, it will forward all emails received by the alias to your main email address.
For example, an alias could be wolverine_denatured184@aleeas.com.
Why is it important for your privacy?
When you browse the internet, companies create profiles of your data, essentially knowing your behavior online, especially if you use a single email address for everything.
But that’s not all; your email address could have been compromised by a company that had a security issue, was hacked, or for some other reason someone gained access to your data. You can check if your email address has been compromised on this page: https://haveibeenpwned.com/ (in my case, my email address has been compromised 7 times).
Email aliases are here to combat these problems because they allow you to never expose your personal email address. You can create an alias for a service you want to sign up for and use it instead of your email address, so your email address can never be compromised in a data breach.
If a breach occurs, disable the alias
Aliases are very flexible; you can create new aliases, block a specific sender, disable or delete an alias you no longer need.
If an alias is compromised, you can disable it, delete it, or generate a new alias to replace it.
Even, depending on the strategy you use to create aliases, you can identify potential sources of spam. For example, if you use an alias for each service, you’ll know exactly which service is sending the spam.
Conclusion
Email aliases are a very interesting tool for improving your privacy and keeping your email address safe.
In my case, I’m using SimpleLogin, which allows you to create up to 10 aliases for free, and in its premium version for $30, you can create unlimited aliases, subdomains, use custom domains, catch-all emails, and more.
There’s also another alternative called Addy.io.
SimpleLogin and Addy.io are open-source and have free and paid plans.
Maybe in a future post, I’ll talk more in detail about SimpleLogin and how I’m using it.