Email aliases are an amazing tool, but unless you know how to use them well, you end up
with the same crowded inbox, only slightly better privacy and no small amount of confusion.
It took me a few years, but I’ve finally developed a system that works well for me,
and perhaps by seeing how I setup my email aliases and my method to categorize and then
anonymize my emails, you’ll gather a few ideas and tools that you can implement for
yourself.
And you’ll get to meet my fictitious online alter-ego, Jason [bleep].
This is All Things Secured, my name is Josh, and throughout this video I’m not only going
to explain how I reduce my email spam to pretty much zero at this point, which is one big
benefit of email aliases, I’m also going to share with you how this setup helps me
stay organized and provides stronger security for my digital life.
I’ll finish by giving you a list of the kind of email aliases that I think everybody
should be using.
This video is sponsored by EasyDMARC, an email security solution for those who own their
own domain and want an easier way to manage and monitor their email authentication.
I use EasyDMARC to manage the All Things Secured domain and I can’t even begin to tell you
how much easier it is for me as a small business owner to analyze my DMARC reports, spot any
threats, and have the confidence of knowing that nobody can impersonate me.
And as somebody who uses email to communicate with many of you in my audience, I also love
the fact that this kind of email authentication increases my domain reputation and as a result,
increases the deliverability of my emails.
If you own your own email domain, setting up DMARC protection should be done no matter
what.
But if you’d like some help or you want to check and see if you’ve set it up correctly,
visit EasyDMARC.com and type in your URL.
They have plans that can work for anybody and you can get 10% off using the code ATSPROMO.
Before we dive in, I want to make sure that you and I are on the same page when it comes
to what we’re talking about when we say email alias.
An email alias is an email address that’s created for a specific purpose.
This is different than an email account, or an email inbox, which could be the final destination
for an infinite number of email aliases.
For the purpose of this video, I’m going to use the word “inbox” to refer to a
specific account where emails are received and stored, whereas an “alias” will refer
to unique email addresses.
Ok, at this point I probably have hundreds of email aliases.
However, I only keep five active email inboxes: my personal account, a business account, an
end to end encrypted account, a fun pseudonym, and finally an alias account where I create
all my anonymous email addresses.
Let me explain how each of these work.
My personal account is just what it sounds like - it’s personal.
I don’t give out this Gmail address to anybody except my family and close friends, which
means that any email received in that inbox is important to me.
For you, you might have to start from scratch with a new personal email account if your
current inbox is already flooded with too much spam, but at one point I felt the same
and over time I was able to reclaim that inbox by changing login email addresses and unsubscribing
from every newsletter that I received.
So it is possible.
And yes, I did say Gmail account.
I could use a more secure email provider here, but this isn’t sensitive communication and
I have other uses for end-to-end encrypted email that I’ll explain in a moment.
Second is my business account, which is pretty self-explanatory.
All business communication happens within that inbox, and I recommend you keep all personal
and business email inboxes separate.
As a small business owner, I’ve created a number of different email aliases tied to
this inbox, including a payments alias, an advertising alias, and a bunch of others.
I even create a separate email alias for my LinkedIn account so that I can easily disavow
it if I need to.
The next inbox is also one of the most important: my encrypted ProtonMail inbox.
I use this account only for secure communication and any financial account logins like my bank
or investment accounts.
Doing it this way has a few advantages.
First, if I receive any kind of finance-related email to one of my other email accounts, I
can be fairly confident that it’s fraudulent or some kind of phishing scam.
I’m also making sure that anytime I communicate with my bank or my CPA or my lawyer that all
the communication can’t be intercepted and scanned.
I pay for my ProtonMail inbox, but that end-to-end encryption is the value that I get from that.
So this alias and the corresponding inbox are only used for secure communication.
Period.
You’re never going to see me sharing this email alias here or anywhere else online.
It’s strictly private.
Ok, now for my third inbox, which belongs to a gentleman by the name of Jason [bleep].
I’m bleeping out the full name because the whole point of a pseudonym is to keep is separated
from my real name.
Jason has his own email account, his own profile picture, his own phone number and even his
own social media accounts.
I’m not going to go into too much detail about this right now - if you want to see
another video about setting up a ficticious online persona, leave a comment below to let
me know.
i’m curious if that’s of interest to you.
What you need to know is that I use this alias and account in places where I need to give
a name and email address but I really don’t want to, and legally don’t have to share
my actual name and email.
The important thing is that this email alias is easy for me to remember and I rarely, if
ever, check this email account.
Just last weekend I went to an event with my family where I had to give over a name,
email address and phone number to participate in this car show and get some of the free
stuff they were giving out.
It had to be a real email address and phone number, but what they now have in their database
is Jason’s info, not mine.
That’s the beauty of aliases.
Now up to this point, I’ve been sharing a very traditional and somewhat manual approach
to email aliases.
If you’re interested in aliases and the privacy control they provide, you’ve probably
already heard of services like Anonaddy, Apple’s Hide My Email, Maildrop or the one I use,
SimpleLogin.
It’s not technically an inbox, it’s acts more like a triage, but it’s still an important
part of my strategy.
These email alias services work in one of two ways.
The first is to create a unique alias for every single login and every single time I
have to hand over an email address.
You can create these aliases manually or most of these servcies have some kind of integrated
extension that allow you to create aliases on the go.
In either case, you’re creating random aliases that are forwarded to another one of your
existing inboxes, at least that’s possible with SimpleLogin, and if these aliases ever
become compromised or start generating too much spam, you can simply delete them and
start over.
Now I do want to mention that there are plenty of service online that offer to generate temporary
email addresses.
These are different from email aliases in that you don’t own them and don’t have
control over them.
They are one time use only.
Perhaps that’s of value to you.
Personally, I prefer to maintain some semblance of control.
This whole alias thing does get tedious, though, and I personally don’t use a new alias for
every single login, yet.
But you can use these alias services in another way which leads me to my final recommendation:
creating alias groups.
I have an email alias that I use specifically for email newsletters that I want to read.
I value those newsletters.
I have another alias that I use for all social media accounts, another for all content streaming
services, one for shopping accounts and one for general marketing materials.
One of the reasons I do this is because when I need to log into my Netflix account on let’s
say my TV, the last thing I want to do is have to dig into my SimpleLogin account, find
the random email alias that was generated and then type it in one letter at a time.
I would rather have one memorable alias that I use for a specific group of accounts.
And these groupings aren’t all forwarded to the same inbox.
The valued newsletters, for example, are forwarded to my personal account but I use filters to
make sure they skip the inbox and go straight to my newsletters folder.
I only check that folder when I have time to read the newsletters, keeping my primary
inbox clear of anything except emails from my friends and family.
Pretty much every other alias group gets forwarded and lands in Jason’s inbox.
He is sacrificially taking on all the marketing junk that comes his way so that I don’t
have to.
If you have additional questions about aliases that I haven’t addressed here or you think
I’ve missed something, I welcome comments below.
And if you’d like to learn more about protecting your email, I’ve compared the 4 best secure
email options here and explained business email security that you can watch next by
clicking down here.