Email Aliases Can Be a Powerful Cybersecurity Tool

Modern digital life often requires us to share our email addresses. You need to provide it when signing up for new accounts, when making purchases, authentication, etc. But you don’t actually need to share your actual email address in order for these organizations to stay in touch with you. In fact, not sharing your true email is a great cybersecurity tool.

The idea is called an email alias, or email forwarding: Essentially, you create a new email address, that automatically routes to your official, original address. You give the alias to an organization you don’t trust 100%, and it sends a message to that alias. The alias then forwards the email to your actual address, so you both get the email, without having to share personal details.

On your end, it feels like typical email: You see messages in your original address’ inbox, and can respond without doing anything special. But if you lose closely, you’ll see that the address is your alias, not your official email.

The cybersecurity side of things doesn’t just apply to hiding your official address: If you notice the alias you use is getting a lot of spam, you might assume the organizations you shared it with perhaps sold your data, or aren’t as honest as they claim to be. No problem: You can simply shut down that alias, and break communications with any organizations you shared it with. After all, they don’t have your actual address, and have no way to message you without the alias.

There are a number of ways to set up a secure email alias. Apple’s iCloud service, for example, includes the service as a built-in perk, called Hide My Email. If you don’t use Apple devices, you could consider DuckDuckGo’s free email protection service works with just about every major email client. DuckDuckGo not only generates you unique addresses for forwarding, it strips trackers from emails as well.