Written by Prof. Rom Feria

It is good practice to use unique passwords on each online service that you use, i.e., do not reuse passwords. This is has been driven by security experts to reduce your vulnerability when one online service gets compromised or breached — since the password is unique, you don’t need to go on all sites and change your passwords. This is where password managers, such as the one I use, 1Password, help. Whilst you password is unique, your email address probably is not. Your email address can be used by malicious actors to try to hack their way on other online services and sites. It is time to have unique email addresses on each site, for the same reasons as having unique passwords.

Some email services allow you to use email suffixes. Suffixes, prefixed with “+” is added to your email address for easier management. For example, if your mail address is [email protected], you can use [email protected] so you can remember that this is your email address on Medium. Email to [email protected] gets delivered to [email protected]. Whilst this is a good way to have unique email addresses per online service or site, it still displays your main email address, [email protected].

There are online services that provide you with disposable email addresses that are valid for a week or two. Hey.com is a new service that gives you 14-day disposable, random Hey.com email address. Whilst this is probably perfect for online shopping sites that you only intend to use once, but for others, you probably need something longer than 14-days.

Email aliases can be created that will hide your main email address. Some providers will allow you to create a limited number of aliases, but most will not allow you to send from the alias email address, or if they do, the recipient mail server might flag it when it authenticates the sender email address (sometimes your email bounces and returns to you). Aliases are good for receiving email, but fail, most of the time, when sending.

After Ducking (used DuckDuckGo), I found two services that are perfect for my needs, AnonAddy.com and Simplelogin.io (listed alphabetically). These are anonymous email forwarders — both allow you to create random email aliases that you can use to sign-up on online services. Creating aliases can be entirely random, like 8577cb11-a92f-4004–[email protected], or by a combination of two or three different words, like [email protected], or by whatever series of characters you like. When you receive a forwarded email, you can simply hit REPLY to send your reply and making it appear to be from the alias, not your main email address. (both aliases were generated but have been retired already)

What makes AnonAddy.com and SimpleLogin.io different from the usual aliases is that sending (not replying) from the alias works! However, the way they do it is different — on AnonAddy.com, if your registered main email address is [email protected] and your registered alias is the one above, and you want to send an email to [email protected], using your [email protected] email, address your email to <8577cb11-a92f-4004–[email protected]>. 

Sending on SimpleLogin.io requires you to generate a reverse alias that is unique to each alias-recipient email address pair. For example, if you want to use the @aleeas.com above and send to [email protected], you need to generate the reverse alias on the website, “pedro at sulat.com” <[email protected]>, then you can send your email from your registered main email address. The SimpleLogin.io mobile app makes this all very simple.

Both AnonAddy.com and SimpleLogin.io allow you to manage all your generated aliases with descriptions so you know exactly what each one is for. They offer a free tier accounts for limited number of aliases, but the prices of their paid services are reasonable. In fact, I am subscribed to both! :)

What makes both AnonAddy.com and SimpleLogin.io the best email forwarding solution out there is the fact that both are open source! Yes, you can self-host your own (you just need a server and your own domain), this means that there is no lock-in! Whilst I could have self-hosted, I opted to support the developers of both services by subscribing.

So with AnonAddy.com and SimpleLogin.io, there is no reason not to make your email addresses unique, like your passwords! Time to detach your email addresses from your main personally identifiable email address! Who would know that [email protected] and [email protected] are me, right?

What are you waiting for — head over to AnonAddy.com or SimpleLogin.io and sign-up now!