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Cybersecurity Awareness Tip 13: Use Email Forwarding to Protect Your Email Addre
Using a password manager with unique passwords is one of the most common cybersecurity recommendations (and SwampGeek agrees). But, when creating new accounts, why not use a unique email address, too?
Use a Unique Email Address
There are many reasons for using unique email addresses when creating accounts:
Limit the reach of image trackers used in 70% of emails
Limit the impact of hacked accounts that contain your email address (billions have been included in data dumps - check yours at Have I Been Pwned? )
Limit the impact of surveillance companies, governments and organizations that collect and sell your email address and associated personal data
To Be, or Not to Be? Which Alias is the Question
There are multiple ways to use unique email addresses, including:
Free email accounts with or without email aliases
Email forwarding using disposable email addresses (random or user named)
Temporary disposable email, which generates a random address, but email is available temporarily to anyone who knows the address
Hackers, spammers, scammers can use this information to target you for phishing or other harmful activities.
Choosing Options
Generating multiple free email accounts (e.g. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, etc.) can get tedious and requires connecting multiple accounts to an email client or checking multiple websites for mail. Using aliases in these accounts can also be tedious and is often limited to a small number. However, Google allows tags (e.g. user#tag@gmail.com) or variations of the user account (e.g. u.s.e.r@gmail.com, us.er@gmail.com are all delivered to the same inbox as user@gmail.com). Free email providers with good privacy protection and reasonable commercial options include:
Forwarding disposable email addresses are best for creating online accounts, especially with the possibility that your email addressed can be sold, shared or stolen. They can be deactivated at any time, blocking the inevitable spam that comes with linking your email address to any other marketable personal information. Better free options include:
DuckDuckGo Email Protection (removes tracking info before forwarding and lets you generate random address via a browser extension)
ManyMe (lets you generate email addresses offline and blocks spam)
Temporary disposable email is only useful when combined with VPN and other privacy protection for when you don't want to be tracked. And since email is publicly available, it shouldn't be used for anything you wish to keep private. Options include:
ManyMe - with ability to manage (change, block, etc.) unique emails offline using a qualifier that doesn't need to be created in advance, e.g. sabrina.walmart@manyme.com or sabrina.mewe@manyme.com
DuckDuckGo Email Protection (@duck.com) - strips tracking information before fowarding and generates random addresses that forward to your primary address via a browser extension
Specifically:
Register for accounts using ManyMe (yourmanyme.account@manyme.com),
Forward your ManyMe email to DuckDuckGo (yourduckuser@duck.com)
Forward your DuckDuckGo email to your regular email account (youruser@tuta.io)
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