When you should use Email Alias?

Simplelogin v. Anonaddy v. Forwardemail v. self hosted

Sharing your primary email is like sharing your home address, the more places that it ends up at, more spam (or worse) you gonna get.

I always recommend atleast having different email for finances, and proton mail fits the bill. Mostly for the UX, you don't want to miss important mails.

Public newsletters should not have your primary email as they can sell it to somebody else, then you will start getting stuff you don't want, and clutter your inbox.

If you just want to get something that requires an email and you don't want to have a relationship with them there after, use temp mails, just brave search, use whichever service works.

Aliases can be used other way around, you want to send an email to someone but doesn't want to reveal your primary email yet.

Imagine you want to interact with a service provider but you don't know how much crap they gonna send your way. So you use an alias, if they seem spammy after a while you can just switch off that alias and you won't be getting any emails from them.

Unsubscribing is an option but you never know if the other party will oblige.

Multiple Inboxes

Your every identity should start with a good email provider like Tuta or proton, then you can use something like forward email to setup custom domain and vanity domains.

Then even after that, setup email aliases with simple login and anon Addy to further the layer of protection.

This helps to organise multiple inboxes in one inbox without relying on gmail tools for eg.

Identity & purpose

Your email is your identity, you should be very clear about that, when you share your email, you are sharing your identity and that should be with a particular purpose not just a knee jerk reaction to an email inbox.

Fabricated History

The conversation you have with a newsletter or someone through emails is a history and an archive.

Aliases help to organise histories and fabricate them if need be.

Unsubscribe, delete Account or disable alias?

Unsubsribing mostly ensures that your email is deleted from their database but if you created an account, then you should delete the account instead.

Disabling alias does not ensure that the stuff related to the account is deleted from the site.

Anonaddy & SimpleLogin

SimpleLogin has unlimited bandwidth so you should segregate newsletters, letters, important stuff, specific emails for specific social media accounts, etc into multiple sub domains aka aliases.

Anonaddy has sort of unlimited aliases, so you should use that for creating new emails and giving out to potential spammers and disable them whenever need be, their paid plan is reasonable and can be used for replying as well.

Titles & Threads

We often organize and find relevant emails in our inboxes through title searches, when using alieases you go one step further by segregating different categories of emails.

Reply, reply all, CC, bcc, is how we organize emails in our inboxes.

Alias Description and tags

In an alias app like simpleloggin and anon addy, you use description and tags to remember for what purpose you gave the email away.

So write the tags and description vigilently.

When not to use them?

Sensitive stuff, stuff not related to the email it was created for.

For eg if you created an alias for a particular purchase and communication from a particular seller, then that's fine, if you create an email for amazon, just use it for amazon.

But don’t mix and mingle, don’t use an alias email for finance stuff, just use a primary email from Tuta or proton.

Forward email is zero access encrypted so are it's MX records, I am not sure about SL or AD.

Proton and Tuta are the last defenses.

Further reading