Email addresses are one of the most vulnerable pieces of personal information to data breaches, and are often the main reason your personal information is spread around the Internet. While using strong passwords and multi-factor authentication can instantly increase your security, we often unknowingly open the door to cybercriminals by providing our email addresses.
3 reasons why you should start using a temporary mailbox for privacy
Whenever you subscribe to a marketing email, sign up for an online shopping platform, or sign up for a free trial, you will almost always be asked to enter your email address. If you use your primary email address to complete these operations, you are tacitly allowing data brokers to collect and sell your information. As identity theft and hacking attacks become more prevalent, seemingly innocuous data can be used for account takeover, phishing, fraud and even website defacement. To make matters worse, if you use the same password for multiple accounts, criminals can even hack into your social media or online banking accounts through leaked email and password combinations.
The good news is that you don’t have to change your existing email habits to effectively improve the security of your personal information. The solution is a “disposable email address” (also known as a temporary email address, disposable email address, or email alias). This type of virtual mailbox is designed for short-term use and is ideal for registering for a website, maintaining anonymity, or preventing your main mailbox from being flooded with advertising emails.
Stop spam
Spam is a real headache, and it’s no wonder that hundreds of unread emails often accumulate in our inboxes. The constant influx of messages from social platforms, shopping sites, and newsletter subscriptions not only takes up space, but may also cause you to miss the really important notifications. To organize Gmail, you might mark spam, unsubscribe, or even take the time to manually clear your inbox. However, even after you unsubscribe, unnecessary emails often continue to appear, leaving you to repeat the tedious task of cleaning up every day.
When managing a personal or business email account, the most effective way to reduce spam is to use a disposable mailbox. Preparing a temporary mailbox for registering a website, creating a shopping account, or receiving newsletters can keep your main mailbox clean and organized. Even better, it’s usually very simple to create an alias mailbox linked to your main mailbox. Taking Gmail as an example, you only need to add the “+” symbol after the user name and then a keyword to create an alias, for example: you+junkmail@gmail.com
Since Gmail aliases can’t be deleted, you can set up filters so that messages sent to that alias are automatically archived, deleted, or labeled for later review when you no longer need them. Other email services also provide different methods of alias management (but some services do not support this feature). It is recommended that you check the instructions of each service provider for more details.
Reduce phishing risks and reduce your digital footprint
Your primary email address is not just a tool for sending and receiving messages. It also plays multiple roles such as file storage, digital identity recognition, and task management. Because of its importance, you must pay special attention to the threats of data brokers and criminals. It’s not unreasonable to feel uneasy when you receive an alert saying “your email address is on the dark web.” Although this does not necessarily mean that your account has been compromised, as mentioned before, a compromised email makes you an easier target for credential stuffing attacks, identity theft, and phishing.
Since your primary email address is your first line of defense to protect your personal information, the wisest thing to do is to avoid disclosing your real email address unnecessarily. When you’re shopping online, downloading free resources, or filling out anonymous questionnaires, if you’re asked for your email, it’s best not to use a personal or work email. While an email alias can help organize your inbox, it doesn’t really hide your real address.
In this case, a disposable mailbox is a safer choice. It is usually anonymous and has nothing to do with your personal identity, allowing you to send and receive emails without revealing your real information. More importantly, it can effectively reduce your risk of phishing attacks. Scammers cannot deduce any of your personal information from a disposable email address, so it is naturally difficult for scammers to use this information to further attack you.
Protect your personal information
Personal or work email addresses often include your first and last name, or initials, making it easier for others to identify and contact you, but because of this, they do not provide adequate privacy protection when you want to remain anonymous. If you want to completely hide your real email address, or just want to receive coupons, receive one-time verification codes, or sign up for a free trial service, then using a completely anonymous temporary email address would be a more ideal choice.
Unlike email aliases that are only used for forwarding, most disposable email services use algorithms to automatically generate random addresses composed of numbers, symbols, and letters. This allows you to interact with strangers without worrying about your true identity being tracked. In addition, some temporary mailboxes will automatically expire within a few minutes or after being used several times. After the account is deleted, no personal data related to you will be retained in the cache, backup or proxy website.
However, although temporary email addresses are convenient, they are not suitable for all situations. When you should use a temporary email address and when you should use a formal email address, you also need to be careful. Many temporary email services are designed to be fast and require no registration, so they often do not provide password protection, identity verification or encryption mechanisms. Their main protection method is to “throw away”. Experts recommend that you carefully read the terms of service and privacy policy of such services before using them. Even if you do not actively provide personal information, the service provider may still collect your IP address and use it to infer more information about you.
Source: KOCPC Chinese