The flood of emails arriving in our inboxes shows no signs of stopping or slowing down, perhaps ever, so if the email service of your choice is going to be usable in any way, it’s crucial that take steps to protect your primary addresses. there are now numerous options for doing this, and you should be able to find at least one that fits your workflow.
We’ve listed a few options below, which you can use beyond the obvious strategy of simply creating a secondary email address that you use for less important communications, a tried and trusted approach that still works today. The idea with aliases, as we’ll describe below, is that they’re more convenient and easier to create (and delete) than full email addresses.
gmail
gmail’s alias options aren’t particularly sophisticated, but they are simple, free, and useful in certain scenarios. As we explained before, you can add dots anywhere in your gmail email address, and messages sent to them will continue to arrive in your inbox. if your email address is sundarpichai@gmail.com, you will receive emails sent to sundar.pichai@gmail.com and s.u.ndarpichai@gmail.com, for example.
Another option, though one that forms seem less willing to accept, is to add a plus symbol and then the text of your choice after your primary email address, but before the @ sign. so you could use aliases like sundarpichai+news@gmail.com or sundarpichai+personal@gmail.com for example. there is no need to “create” or “delete” these aliases: they are only available to you when you need them.
You should use these aliases with gmail filters to get the most out of them (use the create filter link in the search box at the top of gmail on the web). therefore, you can apply a certain label to emails coming in with a particular alias, or you can mark these emails as read and automatically archive them, or you can send them to the trash.
yahoo
If you signed up for a free email address with yahoo, you get a generous 500 disposable email addresses to use, though they all have to start with the same randomly assigned nickname that yahoo gives you (some nonsense combination of letters and numbers). you can add ‘newsletters’ to one disposable address, for example, and ‘shopping’ to another, and so on.
Unlike gmail aliases, these must be created specifically. From your yahoo on the web email inbox, click the gear icon (top right), then choose more settings. select mailboxes and you’ll see alias options under the disposable email address heading. click add and you can configure the address and give it a display name and description if you wish.
once you’re done with a temporary email address, you can get rid of it: select any of the addresses on your list, then click remove address, and it’s gone forever. Aside from the nickname you’re assigned, which you can’t change, this is actually one of the best alias options out there, with hundreds of free disposable email addresses to choose from.
perspective
The alias system that comes along with the outlook address linked to your microsoft account is similar to what yahoo offers, but microsoft only gives you 10 disposable email addresses, instead of 500. in this case, you can choose what you want. I would like to appear before the ‘@outlook.com’ part of the email address.
The easiest way to create aliases is to go to your microsoft account page on the web. click your information, then edit account information and you will be able to add and remove email addresses linked to your account. All you need to provide is the email address you want to use, and Microsoft takes care of the rest. an alias must also be set as your primary alias, which you can do from the same screen.
These are also quite advanced aliases. you can log into windows with them and send emails from them as well as receive messages. when you delete an email address, it’s gone forever and can’t be recycled, so make sure you definitely want to get rid of it before deleting it (this also means it can be hard to find email addresses that haven’t been claimed yet) .
apple hide my email
icloud supports basic aliases similar to yahoo and outlook. if you load icloud on the web, go to the mail component, you can click the gear icon (top left) and then accounts to configure up to three email aliases: these can be any @icloud.com addresses you like, and you can give each one a label to help you tell them apart.
hide my email is a bit different, and it creates email addresses that are much more disposable – you can create and delete them more easily, and you get a random collection of numbers and characters, so you can’t specify the address you get. . you can’t send messages from these disposable addresses like you can from a full alias – they’re basically there to add as an extra layer on top of your main inbox.
If you pay apple for icloud storage, you can hide my email as part of icloud+ and you can create new email addresses from icloud on the web or any of your apple devices in icloud settings. If you’re not paying for iCloud, you can still hide my email, but only on sites and apps that support sign in with apple.
firefox stream
firefox is much more than just a web browser these days, and one of the services that has been derived from the main software application is the firefox relay. the idea is more or less the same as hide my email, which allows you to create disposable email addresses that forward to your primary address and that you can create and delete as needed.
From the firefox relay site, you can generate up to five aliases for free. you get a random combination of letters and numbers followed by @mozmail.com, and firefox relay will tell you how many emails have passed through the address since you created it. you will also need to specify a real email address to which these messages are forwarded. if you use firefox as your browser, you will be able to enter one of your aliases with a couple of clicks every time you fill out a web form.
If you really like the service that firefox offers here, you can subscribe to firefox relay premium for $1 per month. that gives you access to an unlimited number of email aliases, the option to reply from your aliases, and (almost) full control over what exactly these email addresses are.
duckduckgo email protection
duckduckgo is all about privacy, so of course it has its own email alias service, called duckduckgo email protection. it’s still in private beta, but you can request an invite. Install the duckduckgo app for android or ios, then choose email protection on the app settings page to get started with the service.
You get a free, personal @duck.com email address, which acts as a forwarding email address for an account (like gmail or yahoo) you already have. you can add multiple disposable email addresses in addition to these for additional protection; you can’t choose what these random addresses are, but they are easy to create and delete.
Your email aliases can be managed through duckduckgo’s various apps and browser extensions, and being duckduckgo, all tracking technologies are removed from incoming emails before they’re delivered to you. the service may eventually involve a monthly subscription, but for now it’s free.
proton mail
We’ve written about the benefits of protonmail before, and the privacy-focused email service can also provide you with a number of aliases. however, to get these additional addresses, you must be a paying customer. prices start at around $6 per month, giving you five extra email addresses.
From the protonmail interface on the web, click on settings, go to settings and identity & addresses to manage your aliases. you can specify everything in front of the @protonmail.com address, assuming your choice hasn’t been made yet, and you can send messages from your aliases, as well as use them as a way to receive messages.
their aliases can be disabled and deleted from the same screen, at which point all messages sent to them will be returned to the sender; this is how the other services on this list work. It’s probably not a strong enough feature to make you switch to protonmail, but it’s useful if you’re already a user.
masked email
masked email is a somewhat specific option, because you should already be using fastmail and 1password, but if that’s you, it’s worth a look. The service doesn’t cost anything extra, though of course fastmail and 1password do, so take a look at the plethora of features and functionality you get in return to decide if it’s worth it.
If you choose to use masked email, you can generate an unlimited number of random, disposable email addresses that simply forward messages to your primary email inbox. You have no control over what these addresses are, and you cannot send email from them or use them as you would your primary email address.
One of the key benefits of this option is convenience. With the 1password extension installed on all your devices, you can very easily create a new email address when you sign up for something online or within an app. Also, if a particular email address becomes a problem, it can be quickly disabled from within fastmail.
some more options
There are even more options available if none of the ones we’ve mentioned are a good fit. Perhaps it’s a sign of how cluttered and cluttered our inboxes have become that there are so many services out there to help keep your primary email address safe from spam and unimportant messages.
simplelogin is a standalone, open source service worth trying, and you can get 15 aliases for free (pay $4/mo for unlimited). it integrates well with web browsers and smartphones, and you can also send messages from your aliases. on the downside, they’re completely random: you can’t choose the addresses you get with simplelogin.
Another well-known and popular option is anonaddy, which matches simplelogin in many areas: it is also based on open source software and allows you to send messages from your aliases. you can choose completely random addresses or you can choose your own, and you can create an unlimited number of random aliases for free, although there are monthly bandwidth limits.
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